
Class ~SSS^^3£' 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



EARLIER POEMS 



REGINALD C. ROBBINS 

'I 




CAMBRIDGE 

printeD at tETJe Kitjer^iDe presffif 

1913 



\1i 



COPYRIGHT, I9I3, BY REGINALD CHAUNCEY ROBBIMS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



fr^n A'} K A on o 



CONTENTS 

I. POEMS OF APPRECIATION . . . i 

ON CERTAIN GOSPEL PAINTINGS ... 3 

AN *'AUTOUR DU BERCEAU '' ... 6 

A **DEAD MONK'* 8 

A MADONNA OF DEL SARTO . ... 9 

APOTHEOSIS .12 

A MEMORIAL I4 

SUFFERANCE 16 

''MARINE NASCENTI" 1 7 

KARNAK 20 

THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS AT THEBES . 23 

ABU SIMBEL 25 

THE SCULPTURES OF ABU SIMBEL, WITHIN 27 

KERRERI 30 

**OH, TO WHOM.? '' 32 

A DIALOGUE 35 

MELOSPIZA 38 



HI 



CONTENTS 

POEMS OF NATURE 41 

MID-MAY 43 

SPIRIT . 47 

SOUL 51 

WHITSUNTIDE 53 

SPRING-MOON 56 

QUIET 58 

FORCE 60 

MIDSUMMER 63 

MORTMAIN tj 

NOON . 69 

MARSH-MUSIC .71 

A CEREMONIAL VERSE 73 

CONSECRATION JJ 

RESIGNATION ....... 80 

THE BARBARIANS 82 

HIEMATION . 87 

UNDER GLASS 91 

THE GARDEN OF THE GULF .... 97 



IV 



CONTENTS 

III. POEMS PSYCHOLOGICAL . . . . loi 

THE SWIMMER 103 

CARRION 105 

THE NOVICE 108 

THE VIOLINIST Ill 

ONE WAY OF GRIEF II5 

THE HERMIT II9 

AN ORNITHOLOGIST 123 

AN ASTRONOMER 1 27 

THE DIVORCED 131 

A CANDIDATE FOR COMMITTAL. . .136 

THE CONVALESCENT 142 

THE BLOCKADER 1 52 

THE PATROL 162 

A DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY . . .173 
A HORTICULTURIST. . . . . . 184 

THE PRIMA DONNA 195 



EARLIER POEMS 



POEMS OF APPRECIATION 



ON CERTAIN GOSPEL PAINTINGS 

The story of an alien race ; minute, 

Painstaking portraiture of Syrian, Jew, 

Greek, Arab, Roman : if a tragedy. 

Yet strange ; if an apotheosis, still 

Too fleshly (ay, too blood-stain'd) to believe ! — 

Has it become but this ? That saviorship 

Saved, then, the world a scant two thousand years ; 

Not now nor yet tomorrow ? Yesterday 

Was Christ Christ; and today but Joseph's son ? 

Just people painted : these are thieves ; and he 

A malefactor ! Nay, no paradise 

Nor thin transfiguration spoils the spell 

Of sweat and dust ; of some mere agony 

Of wasted passion, of a thwarted soul 

At best but disillusic4i'd. And the poor, 

Deluded, disappointed Semite folk 

Turn back to toil with heavy heart, take up 

Alone and wholly comfortless the grim, 

Interminable burden. That is all ; 

Just people painted : an intense, sweet life 



EARLIER POEMS 

Crush'd out and ended ; and a discontent 
Where had been undemurring drudgery. 

Just people painted. — Slightly from the shore 

A boat becalm'd, with silent fisher-folk 

Silently fishing ; and an azure sky 

Quiet above the boat, and underneath, 

A quiet, azure water ; and about, 

A pasture-land ; and, lo ! a little town 

At peace and undemurring : all is quite 

In the world as though there had not been a son 

To Joseph nor to Mary. And, behold ! 

There stands upon the shore alone, unseen, 

Mary's and Joseph's son. And all the world 

(He sees and knows) is as if he, a man, 

Had never been : his agony, his life 

So tragic-true, saving men yesterday ; 

Not now, nor yet tomorrow ! And in that 

Unspoken and unspeakable despair 

He calls or seems to call ; is seen or seems 

So to be seen quiet upon the shore 

With earnest beckoning. And they becalm'd 



ON CERTAIN GOSPEL PAINTINGS 
Start up from fishing ; for they seem to see. 

It is the story of an alien race ; 

A folk whose human tragedy endured 

To save men's souls a scant two thousand years ; 

Not now, nor yet tomorrow. Shall the world 

Be as though yesterday had never been ? 



AN "AUTOUR DU BERCEAU" 

Were it not for the angel in the place, 

The place were so forlorn : a chamber, cold, 

Low, rough and scantly cumbered ; here a stool, 

Yonder the settle, and in homeliest sort 

The mother's mattress, cradle for the babe : 

Beyond these, nothing. Only, of the bed 

A woman, worn and weak almost to death ; 

Of the crib a weanling scarce with strength of life 

Yet, but with potency to wax and grow 

Big to the father's frame he has not seen 

Nor e'er may know save she shall, point by point, 

Mould the babe to be manly as was once 

Her man and guardian of the house. But she 

Can nothing of herself ; can scarcely live 

A little ; much less, lend of life. And, were 

These all that fill'd the place, ay, how forlorn ! 

Yet, to the nature of the need, is come 
An angel in the house. An utmost need — 
And he is there, busied about the babe 



AN "AUTOUR DU BERCEAU'' 

Beseemingly. She is too sick to say : 

** Sir, spare us ; render your benignity 

Where is more worth." Nor had she dream'd to urge 

Of heaven such aid august. She lies there now 

By very reason of her need of help 

Quietly, awfully accepting so 

The ministry ; one hand by force of love, 

Even despite the fever, raised (the least) 

In mother-motion toward the babe. And he. 

The babe, too young to question whence the care 

If supernature's, or the world *s right way, 

Croons, as 't would seem, with somewhat which can 

touch 
Sick ears to sympathy. And so she lies 
Her lids just lifted to that light between 
The white wings. — 

It were so forlorn a place 
Were not the angel there. But need is hers 
And love — and he is there ; and shall be there 
In the house of love. For such were ne'er forlorn. 



A "DEAD MONK" 

So, he has triumphed. This is his reward. 
Thus shall the triumph ever be. And thus 
Be the reward. — Mark the grim jaws that locked 
To bar world's bread out. Lo ! the inward lids 
And beetling fore-brow, hard-drawn, glooming down 
To screen sight from earth's seeming —all with aim 
To cheat earth at the last and leave with her 
Nothing of manhood. Ay, for nothing earth's 
Nor man's remain'd to die out of this corpse. 
This is earth's, man's revenge ; that here remains 
Nought worth commemoration. Could a sense 
Screen'd from earth's seeming pierce these shows of 

things 
To earth-hood and be manhood that remains 
A memorable presence ? Could he be 
Immortal, all whose life expected death ? 



A MADONNA OF DEL SARTO 

^But still the other* s Virgin was his wife* 

Nay, there is nought more holy in the world 

Than this her motherhood : no mystery, 

Miraculous dispensation ; none the less 

Divine in wrapt acceptance of the truth. 

Hers, no mere ignorance of woes to come, 

Nor yet reluctance ; but a soft acclaim 

For boundless possibility to be 

Sponsor to man's extremest sacrifice : 

For any sacrifice in absolute peace 

(With scarce appeal for recompense to God !) 

Her mother's soul may earn of her man-child. 

She would not so deny divinity 

As to forswear man-child for born of man. 

She would not need a heaven, who, at the cross 

As now, would wear still the same sober grace 

For wisdom that our worldhood is divine. — 

Here is it shown me, this so holy thing 

Of motherhood. Here will I sit and seek 

To fathom it ; and learn thee, O Andrea ! 

9 



EARLIER POEMS 

She was thy wife, we know. Yet much of this 
Thou gavest. Seem'd she like this^ then, to thee ? 

Think ! a man's wife may be madonna too, 

Both truths in one love ! — Raphael had none 

Such intimate insight ; for he had no wife, 

Could paint Madonna only. Titian, haply. 

Achieved too loftily to learn a truth 

So humbly holy. Michelangelo 

Knew thousand shapes of mightiness ; his strength 

Was desperate, glorious more than motherly. 

Rubens ? There 's scarce one pose of all but smacks 

Of some vulgarity. Murillo fain 

Had painted this thou paintedst, O Andrea ! 

The rest are round about thee. Thou hast found 

Even in thy forthright, plain presentment homely 

Of this thou knowest, nimbus'd by thy great. 

Kind, twilight, pitying soul with immanence 

Of adumbration : thou hast spoken the love 

Without sin and the spirit incarnated 

Nor Titian, Raphael, nay, Angelico 

Had more than symbolized. — Did they believe 

10 



A MADONNA OF DEL SARTO 

Theirs were no symbols ? Ah ! but now the signs 

Have need of explanation ; so are false. 

What now the Virgin-Birth ? What angel came 

To Mary yearning ? Who might mean he saw 

Aught womanly ascend into the clouds ? 

And what their import were these facts approved ? 

But one truth speaks which these mere signs would 

show ; 
One Mother-of-God there is, each newest hour 
A woman realizes (not with fear — 
With glad assumption of the privilege !) 
That hers is for another infinite life 
To offer infinite life ; and be divine 
In being motherly. This, O Andrea, 
Is thine : thy wife ; so, thy madonna too ! 



II 



APOTHEOSIS 

A LEGEND OF THE PAINTING BUDDHA 

** Majesty ! — by your pardon ! — courtiers all, 

My critics ! much is it of grief to me 

Through your dissatisfaction ; yet not anger, 

Envy nor malice in me that I learn 

Your loftier lights than mine ; but loneliness 

Where least I seem'd alone. This scene which suits 

You, Majesty, and you, critics, so ill ; 

This forest-park, this foliaged tracery 

Of twining boughs and moss and cool-sluiced brooks, 

This green and garden'd sanctuary; made I 

Of paint from pallet that therein I might 

As in an own particular paradise 

Delight, with you, through you ; and that therein 

My spirit, god-like, leaving at its death 

This patient tenement, in such abode. 

Yea, in this very painted plash and plume 

Of cold brook and of whispering pine, should bide 

Eternally as in Nirvana. These 

I made ; who feel a soul-sufficiency 

12 



APOTHEOSIS 

Even in this scene which suits you, sirs, so ill — 
Mine own particular paradise ! I grieve 
But that alone, untenanted of you 
These groves receive me so in singleness ; 
Me dead to man's less- world I fain had loved: 
A God ! — By pardon, Majesty, I take 
Farewell now ; enter into and enjoy 
Nirvana ; feel this art-world I have made, 
Truth of mine everlasting being. Man, 
Forever fare thee well ! " 

He turn'd and stepp'd 
Into that painted world of leaves and boughs 
His heart and hand had made ; turn'd, enter'd in 
And disappear'd 'mid those hush'd, whispering stems. 
Then did that whole wood-world his soul had made 
Vanish aloft in a live light, all hues 
Melted and intermingled unto White. 

But one saith musingly ; ** What god is he? 

No god ! The god-like had still wrought and staid ! " 



13 



A MEMORIAL 

Here in the chancel-stillness let us sit 

And dream together of the dead. For thou 

Lovedst the dead with fitly equal love. 

And here are none to move with murmur 'd prayer ; 

Nor mighty, overpowering music pour'd 

To bear the dream adown : but quiet now, 

Silence and splendor of the shining shrine. 

See how the Christ in simplest dignity, 
Tender and strong and gravely radiant sits 
With hand half-lifted, teaching. See how kneels 
Restful, upheld with sweet self-poise of faith, 
Buoy*d about as by fervor of full proof, 
And eyes one reverence of high belief, 
Mary. And light between, above, beyond 
And wide about in beams of rich sunshine 
Through the grape-arbor falling fills the porch. 
Temple and colonnade, fills the far hills 
Purpled and all yon summer-shimmering city 
With steadfastness of saintly aureole stream'd 

14 



A MEMORIAL 

Through and through : atmosphere of peace and truth. 
Feel how the pure forms fill the world with wonder 
More than a summer's sun. Feel how the day 
Floods face and figure of them mutely there 
With meaning more than mere memorial. 

Dream on the peaceful scene of serious faith 
Steadfast and luminous and lovely, flooding 
The world with beauty of religion. Dream 
Real the loved presence of the steadfast dead. 



15 



SUFFERANCE 

And one, tumultuous, wail'd through bursting tears: 
** Lord, is this she ? " And one made stifled moan 
With hot, dry agony of desperate gaze. 
And one beside the bed,, impetuous, dropped 
Floor-flung with sweat and passion-prayer of soul 
Rigidly, terribly beseeching; each, 
Each heart a desolation newly-made. 
Grief lone, full to the fashion of each strength. 

But one, and he the eldest, deepliest bow'd 

By his world's weight — half-broken yet though 

brave — 
In whose heart burden of the loss to bear 
Were anguish 'd most ; he whom his gentlest frame 
Seem'd least fit to sustain in grief's first fall ; 
He but stoop'd low and kiss'd her where she lay 
Newly dead ; mildly laid upon her lips 
Love's benediction, faith's finality : — 
•* Yea, this is she. There can come no grief now, 
No loss." Then he stood quiet in the midst 
As death ; fearing not life nor anything. 

i6 



"MARIAE NASCENTI" 

How but the stone aspires ! See huge and high, 
What lift to the great groins ; how tiptoe stand 
Pillar and pinnacle and minaret 
Intent on heaven-attaining : stalwart still, 
Buttressed and bearing well the weight of a world 
Which broods on Milan ! And above these far, 
Ay, beyond Milan as an ice-robed Alp, 
Even above best reach of saint on saint 
However pedestall'd, the golden maid, 
Of God the Mother, dominant of all 1 

It is a work of ages when the world 
Was very sure of aspiration ; when 
Men slaughter'd, tortured, buttressing a faith 
Which tower'd serene beyond mere mundane ways 
Of firm foundation ; when the power of earth, 
The stony-heartedness of things, seem'd but 
The more assurance of a love vouchsafed 
Beyond earth-intimation. Then the stone — 
Stone still and needing to be buttress'd well, 

17 



EARLIER POEMS 

Toil'd-in for centuries; ay, fretted, chased 

With ingenuity of much disguise — 

Leap'd yet a wan, white flame : its smoke, the clouds 

Even of God's footstool ; and its flower and birth 

The Mother-Maiden, pinnacled of all. 

Now are we not so sure. Our warranty 

Absolves not slaughter. Though we work ; and some 

Have solace, learning of a faith that builds 

No altars ; nay, nor longer needs to build. 

Our faith is not a stone, nor our new Christ 

Born of an idol eminent o'er all. 

Yet are there hours when we would fain be sure, 

Have stones that we might buttress ; but to be 

Certain of aspiration ; not as now 

Mute for the fear we would not speak aright. 

Yea, is this temple for a mummery ? 

Are stones, that leap and lift with yearning, tombs 

Of a dead passion and a soul that was ? 

Is there no faith which Milan may today 

Feel vaulted, groin'd and pinnacled ; no Love 

High over Milan ? — 

i8 



'*MARIAE NASCENXr* 

In this vast, dim place 
A woman crouched ; ah, with an usual need 
Of intercession ; at the least, a want 
Of heart-salvation ! And within her soul 
(Her intimate estimate of many things 
Their mutual ministry each truth to each), 
Even through the mockery of those stone lips 
Of hers, which mean not : may not meaning be 
Of pillar, groin and lifted vault, of saint 
And saint on pinnacle all buttress'd well 
And chased with labor of old years of hope 
When strength abounded — hero, sage and saint, 
Angels and then the stars : and, in the midst. 
With world-inviting arms compassionate 
The Christ-Child Mother : Minister of all ? 



19 



KARNAK 

This, then, is Karnak. From without her walls 
Come sounds of man and beast ; but from within, 
None. If beyond her gateways there be green 
Groves and the silver of wide streams, within 
Are none. But stones are here yet, huge and stark 
And silent in their ruin; only stones. 

What homely noise ascends into the air 
From earth around : the croon of doves, and chant 
Of sudden cockrels ; all the dooryard sounds 
Of humble husbandry ! And thence the cry 
Of children, naked as the dust, at sport. 
Thence, too, the lilt and strange, wailing refrain 
Of boys who bear in baskets the dark loam 
(And they can dig but sphinxes to the light!) 
Fresh from a bank-side. Or above these all 
An ass, his sufferance failing, speaks at last 
That agony of utterance of his. 
Such are the sounds ; with overhead the scream 
Of vulture, owl or hawk who find delight, 

20 



KARNAK 

Refuge and home in ruin. But within 

Is silence like eternity; and stone. — 

Ay, and about this mighty death-mask lies 

Yon lustrous circlet of the youngest green 

That grows by gift of Nile. And, on beyond 

The circuit of where once was Thebes, uprear 

Cliffs that are catacombs of kings; whereby 

One sees a temple to greet Karnak still 

Through ruin ; or, mere flecks upon the plain, 

Memnon's colossi gazing eastward yet 

Though sight was long since reft them, and their dawn 

Leaps not that gave them voice. And these are not 

Thebes nor eternity, but tombs and stone 

Tottering in ruin. Nothing that was built 

Lives; only lives the young spring everywhere. — 

Though these were builded for eternity, 

These stones ; to sun's praise whilst the sun be lord! 

Thebes, to be Thebes an if the heavens fall ! — 

Lo ! the day lingers. These vast arches stretch 
Purpling their shadows; and themselves grow gold. 
And somewhat of the sky seems strewn among 

21 



EARLIER POEMS 

Their fallen. And the sun-rays stream a strength 

To build up Karnak : and the place is whole. 

Yon black-stoled verger seems at sacrifice 

With incense — certainly world's parasites 

That pester are not here : but only I 

With Pharaoh's children and a thousand thoughts 

How Egypt still were Egypt — I alone 

Weeping in Karnak! For we now who build 

Have knowledge how our building, though of stone, 

Earns not eternity. And we are come 

Since Pharaoh's hour through many a wanton hope 

Of other-worlds, back to men's earth at last, 

Faithless of any other earth whereon 

To build us temples ; seeking only now 

To build, if build we must, not out of stone 

Nor to eternity — unless today 

Fore-hold tomorrow ; save the life of things 

Be proven in dying; and our conscience of 

Ruin be resurrection. — So we stand 

Weeping in Karnak for the faith of kings. 



22 



THE TOMBS OF THE KINGS AT THEBES 

Here are world's portals to the underworld. — 
For I have been and seen and am come back ; 
And, being returned, must speak of what I saw. 

The entrances are downward ; and the ways 
Darksome : but still the scenes set by the way 
Are like to those of earth if not so fair. 
Merely, 'tis night; the sun, an orb of dusk. 
And these are ghost-things merely and not men : 
Though looking like them, yet lacking their life. 
For earth is pictured merely, not unlike 
That Theban river-plain beyond the hills 
Where life is teeming : only, not alive. 
And at the core this strange-hewn underworld 
Is of the desert rocks above it, whence 
The corpse was carried to abide below 
Eternally beneath them. Nought is here 
Unearthly : only, earth is here like death. 
Even the perpetuity is just 
Earth's desert seeming-perpetuity 

23 



EARLIER POEMS 

Where change were slow, none less than elsewhere 

sure, 
And time's eternity less subtly fiU'd 
With values born of mutability 
In conscienced apperceptions among men. 

Therefore am I come back, having been and seen 
How wholly worthless were an underworld. — 
We, who have learn 'd how night and day but prove 
Sun's single course ; how spirits still are men ; 
And conscience, all-time ; need no longer dig 
World's exit downward. But have been and seen 
And are return'd, each hour; by every breath. 



24 



ABU SIMBEL 

There is an hill hath open'd out its heart 
Unto the sun of each advancing spring 
Through many thousand ages of delight 
With wonder and with sweetness mightily ; 
A temple and an habitation of 
The dignity and wonder of all things. 

Kings were its acolytes. And at its gates 
Colossi, clothed in sweetness as in strength, 
With sacred wonder at the world gave guard ; 
Declaring, even by beauty more than bulk. 
The splendor of that hill's unaltering faith 
From everlasting. And the infinite 
Succession of the days and nights ; the flush 
Of dawn upon that portal ; and the rich, 
Mysterious meaning of the moon ; have yielden 
Unto those giant wardens something of 
A wisdom earn'd of large experience 
Regarding earth : of ever-murmuring Nile 
And the still orbit of the Nubian hills. 



2; 



EARLIER POEMS 

Stars lent their lustre. And a nightingale 

Hath sung (or haply he may so have sung 

As now) through every twilight. — That those forms 

Have scarce been cognisant how from their midst 

One form hath shatter' d ground ward ; have not seen 

How their sole hill alone, of all those hills 

Which seem'd so human, e'er had any heart 

To open at the springtime ; nor have felt 

How kings have ceased to kindle in that fane 

Incense of splendor ; how the sweetness of 

Those inner chambers hath given space to dust ; 

And only beasts inhabit. Nor have known 

How sand like snow lies drifted round that hill 

Tawny and savage, swart and desert gray. 



26 



THE SCULPTURES OF ABU SIMBEL, 
WITHIN 

NOT for thy victories, nor for this vast, 

Vainglorious temple in entirety 

(Though that were somewhat, Ramses !) but for this 

Innermost chamber, that last sanctuary 

Wherein abide the best of Egypt's gods ! 

What though thy figure undivine must sit 

Beside great Thebes', beside great Memphis' God 

And Him Who lights the world ? We leave thee this 

The last infirmity of kings ; and thank thee 

Still for that inner chamber in the rock. 

There, all were holy, Ramses ; nay, even thou ! 

There ; where the bats inhabit and the owl 

Finds not enough of starlight ; where no air 

From any wandering, desert puff of wind 

Disturbs the settling of the sifted dust ; 

There, though as in crumbling bands bitumen-swathed j 

Nigh lasteth a religion, elsewhere nought ; 

A power and a passion and a spirit — 

27 



EARLIER POEMS 

Ptah and Harmachis, yea, and Amen-Ra — 
Which needed but some self-divinity 
(Nay, Ramses, no divinity of kings !), 
Some insight of our soul-unendingness 
(Conclusiveness by all-time sympathy, 
Scarce as by an endurance which is not) ; 
To move and hold the world unto this hour. 
Call thee a man, humble and fain to sit 
In dust and darkness, featureless and worn, 
Though, even by virtue of appreciant doubt. 
Faith-hearted to move heaven to help the world ; 
Call thee a Christ : and earth were saved anew ! 

Men can earn conquests over desert hordes 
Now as in thy time, Ramses ; men might boast 
Vainglorious, forsooth, almost as thou. 
Thy gods, thy pettier godship, were not so 
Efficient to restore the world. —And yet 
Step from this chamber, Ramses ! Our estate 
Hath need of men like thee, at worst, with faith 
In worth and warrant ; who, at worst, accept 
(Wiselier than thou and humbly thus the more !) 

28 



THE SCULPTURES OF ABU SIMBEL, WITHIN 

Responsibility through all they do. 

Thou hadst no doubts of thine efficiency 

To build a holy place unto all time, 

God-like to stand accountable at last ! — 

Though is earth doubting still beyond this rock. 

And lo ! even now her doubt (that sympathy, 

That soul, of best belief !) is visiting 

What else were sepulchre ! The springing sun 

Casts one clear shaft past archway, pillar, hall ; 

And penetrates thy tomb and turns this stone 

To triumph. Shall the momentary beam 

Provoke no stirring of these senseless things 

That thou hast wrought thee ? Shalt thou let the 

world 
Learn thee too late, learn thee but to bemoan 
The inestimable error thou hast made ? 
Shall sun disclose his children wholly dead ; 
To leave thee lost ; for lands that knew thee not ? — 
Wake, Ramses ! Let there be one man of faith ! 



29 



KERRERI 

Above, a pitiless burning ; and below, 
The burnt earth ; here and there a mockery, 
Some dream of the desert that the blue above 
Were fallen and found unscorching : but the truth 
Is bitter ; and the stones are blistering. — 
Yet were it rather that earth's sufferance 
Is ended and her agony endured. 
Earth is not sleeping now : but — * only dead \ 

Earth had a grisly dream, a gaunt debauch 

Of truculent riot in the name of God, 

A furious lechery of faith ; and here 

Awoke in death-throes. Tens of thousands slain 

Witnessed the cataclysm. And the sun 

Burnt the bones bare and left them where they lie : — 

All in the name of God ; the false report 

Of one who cried : *' God cometh to demand 

That all men through the mouth of me. His mouth. 

Worship with one voice ; through the hand of me 

Smite with one sword.*' — The unity-of-God 

30 



KERRERI 

Were not an unity of creed ; the cult 
Of faith, not formal. The monotony 
Was death, not life. And earth was drench'd in blood. 

So serve we somewhat faith by bathing earth 

In blood, by lying and by lechery, 

Through each the darkness of his loneliness* 

Bewilderment begot of love and need. 

So, by the failure of the singleness 

Of creed, best prove we truth's totality 

As we are each and several : * God *, the whole 

By virtue but of multiplicity 

In heart-belief, each heart unto himself. — 

Then the sun comes and burns the bones of men 

Bare where they lie ; and earth lies ashenly 

Dead ; save for some uncertain dream of blue 

Fallen here, yon, nay, everywhere about : 

As though the sky were found unblistering. 



31 



"OH, TO WHOM?" 

Thou woman, beautiful and glad and kind 
As love's own soul ! Thou wonderful and wise. 
Silently smiling for such sun, such shine 
Of blue sky, green sea and the wide, white sand ; 
Like sunshine smiling, like this crystalline 
Beauty and wonder of the clean, warm world; 
Thou, sitting silently and smiling ; thou. 
Perfect, a world to worship, power and peace 
Call'd woman, and divine — peace in thine eyes, 
Peace in thy pure smile and thy smooth, wide brow 
And in thy form, flesh moulded without flaw : 
Thou, peace ! — And I may sit beside thee thus 
Worshipping silently (yet smiling too) 
Thee, of thy world ; and wonder that the day 
Can hold divinity so worshipful, 
Even this deep-eyed, crystalline, soft day 
Contain within its world more worshipful 
A world than clouds or sky or sands or ocean, 
Containing thee. I so may sit and smile 
Silently. And if silence seem to me 

32 



**OH, TO WHOM?'' 

Someway not all our hearts were made for ; when 

Some hour I needs must yearn to speak, pour forth 

The worship that is in me, praise aloud 

This wonder and this richness of all things ; 

Make known the marvel that thou art : made known 

That, hearing, thou mayest grow more glad for worship 

Musical, universal, reverent 

Of all thou art ; if sometimes silence seem 

Miscomprehension, unlike lucid love ; 

If life necessitate a speech and motion, 

O thou divine, shalt thou not hearken, lift 

My life to level of thy truth of love ? — 

Nay : for thou feelest all, feeling full love 

Speechless for perfect commune. Shall I need 

Rebuke, refusal of mere hearkening 

To voice of mine ? Else, learn in silence here 

Divinely so to smile in mute content ? — 

Dear, I am no dead god to feel thy beauty 
Of earth and air and ocean and of thee. 
Nor passionately burst in speech, pour praise 
Unto this firmament of sands and ocean, 

33 



EARLIER POEMS 

Sun, clouds and skies, all thee ; speak passionately 
World's divine-human love and longing forth 
Large as I may I — Lo ! that thou wilt not hearken, 
Hearken, is grief too great. I am a man. 



34 



A DIALOGUE 

*' Look!, love, where easternly beyond yon isle 

Glows the gold moon ; and all the wave between 

Is saffron. And a flush of westering day 

Tints opal the near face of things : these tops 

Of forest which from this wild eminence 

Slope seaward ; oaks and many a towering pine. 

And these are voiceful with the serious speech 

Of this soft west-wind from the after-day, 

A murmur and a whispering musicwise 

Like wash of tone-tint widely through the night. 

These are the sights and sounds. Look, love; and 

hear — 
That we may seriously and like some cloud 
Receive into our hearts this solemn light 
Of aftermath ; and in our still night-souls 
Be luminous, brooding o'er land and sea. — 
Fancy the fate of him who as a cloud 
Not luminous but utterly alone 
Misses or sun or day-responsive moon ; 
Floats fed but by the stars ; love, feel for him. 

35 



EARLIER POEMS 

We are not like him. We are like yon cloud 

Which, fed by stars at will, receives none less 

Into its heart this solemn aftermath 

Of sun and of the sun-responsive moon ; 

Still sweeping seaward with the soft west- wind." 

** We are not like him. Would we were more like ; 

In this our hour of solemn marriage-rite 

Of earth, air, ocean, night or day, more like 

His nobler loneliness, the absolute poise 

Of him star-speculant, sublimely sole. 

He in his loneliness' sublimity 

Is star-stuff, yea, and night and day ; alone 

Earth, ocean, sun and moon unto himself — 

As were not we, for all night's serious vow. — 

Would (almost !) each alone were self-sufficed ! " 

** Nay, love ; but were not our sufficiency 

Still his, his most, more self-sufficient, but 

By being, beyond his insight, through and through 

A sweet supremacy, a focusship, 

Worldhood and unioning of things that are 

36 



A DIALOGUE 

(Ay, who, but such as we, might be assured ?) 
Beyond his ken who lonelily alone 
Unions but less of world ; hath comradeship 
With stars, maybe, yet only by some vague, 
Unhuman half-light indistinctively 
Of reference in soul to earth or ocean, 
Dayspring or day-responsive moon ? Ah, love, 
For we are All-sublimity ; are one 
With self-completion. And the star-fed soul 
Is God but in and through our holier heart. — 
Look, love, where easternly yon moon responds 
The sun-love; and all earth and ocean, air. 
Daylight and night-light in yon cloud between 
Are bosom'd, luminous on the west-wind.** 



37 



MELOSPIZA 

Full in my front, straight to the sun he sang 
His song. And I have heard ; and comprehend. — 
There is no wonder in the world like this, 
The supreme art-achievement. — Love he sang. 
And in so singing synthesized a world ; 
Symphonized utterly an universe. 

Plainly. — An inconspicuous, small bird 
Mottled and fluffed of plumage, here and there 
Streak 'd chestnut on an undertint of gray. 
Calmly. — A brisk impertinence tongue-tied 
By dint of bustle, of an agile, deft. 
Impudent robbery of sod-hid seed. 
Softly. — A rustling in the brush, beneath 
Old, autumn, dead things and the tangled stems 
Of storm-thresh'd vineries. When suddenly 
A flutter and leap ; and plump upon one stretch 
Of naked twig aloft at level of 
My moveless eye, and breath -to- breath with mine 
Un whispering lips ; close, so that sun and sky 

38 



MELOSPIZA 

Sphered us two as one centre ; in the splendor 
Of spring-shine and the quivering atmosphere 
He sang. Three flute-notes and a warble, a trill 
Of half one hurried instant: and 'twas done. 

T was done. The full throat and the vibrant tongue, 

The sky-directed, open gape were proved — 

If just by their infinitesimal 

Focusship fix'd of universal sky. 

Of sun and earth, spring and the singing soul — 

My soul, mine intimate vitality! 

Ay, for I heard ; and comprehend and worship 

For art-achievement in an absolute love. 



39 



II 

POEMS OF NATURE 



MID-MAY 

Life is too young, the sap and song of it, 

For quiet, firm, robust philosophy, 

Mid-solstice of the million-marveird mind ; 

Too young for ripe solidity mature 

Of the midsummer's noon. But sap with song 

Leaps to the making of maturity. 

Surges and swells and bursts in million-marveird 

Newness of swift growth tremulous for delight ; 

Half -wondering for the evanescence ; strong 

Yet tender, delicate-leaved ; weak miracle 

For gossamer, green, soft subtlety of strength. 

Spring leaps mature in many a marvell'd meaning 

Of mid-solstitial symphony to-be ; 

Spring leaps mature ; even as solidity 

Rich of midsummer's noon and firm, robust, 

Full chord of green-grown June's self-questioning 

Interprets still but spring, but sap and song 

And poesy young of May's old miracle. 

Life is too young to feel life's age-completion 

Complete in world's new youth. But sap with song 

43 



EARLIER POEMS 

Show substance of June-felt maturity. — 
How feel philosophy alive, save song 
Leap to be sap and surge and bloom of it ? 
How sing, save strong in million-marvell'd mind ? 
Wherefore be song philosophy's fit speech ! 
Wherefore let spring sing, meaning the full June ! 

Ay, all the year *s in each least blossoming ; 
All the world, all the search of soul that seeks, 
In every flower and blade and budded sheaf 
Of the young-grass'd lowland and the shimmering, 
Gossamer woods ; ah ! all the power of proof 
In the weak, tentative unfolding ; truth 
Through the frail metaphor ; fragility 
Year-universal by the throb of it ! 
There are fluff' d ferns unfolding their soft fringe 
Of feathery fronds beneath the cool May-wind 
Low-linger'd over the marsh ; or, 'mid dank mosses 
Where wind nor sun save fitfully falls in, 
Uncurling palely their pearl-featured front 
Spread backward-broad to feast and fill from air 
Full of their verdure of the massier June 



44 



MID-MAY 

Mature. For 't is the richness of the brake 

To-be that makes the meaning beautifullest 

Of the May-swamp. And unto the May-swamp 

New notes, like delicate dew or sun-shower spray'd 

Liquid-cool from the myriad-moted beam 

Aslant, fall flowery from the bough where birds 

Make sound of the sap-music in May-mind, 

Make bubbling, overbuoyant blossoming 

(Well-ware how blossom-burst and lilt of tune 

Bring the blush 'd fruit; unware how ripe- juiced fruits, 

Seeded, eternalize but vernalhood) 

For steep'd cells and the fibrous strength to-be ; 

For world's truth, universe of throat's own tune. — 

How should the May-bloom cease ; how, the furr'd fern 

Desiccate to a stiff senility, 

Spring-song turn fruitage and through fruit decay ? 

How, poesy age as to philosophy ? 

For the very seeding, for the forward pulse 

Of fresh sap, fresh song ; for the vitalizing 

Through all the veins of fresh, succeeding spring 

Of a new meaning ! Firm philosophy, 

Fact-conscious foliature of grown June-time 

45 



EARLIER POEMS 

(Yielding to mirth and marvel of May-mind 
Meaning for miracle) needs yet miracle, 
Spring-heart, spring-hope, spring-innocence anew 
Fresh out of fountains of its past-won faith 
Year after year ; that so, by pulsing back 
Through fall and fall, ever the new-won faith 
Of June shall live not sole by memory, live 
In heart's upsurging of ensuant spring 
Perpetually ; that spring to spring shall be 
Ever ascension, integrated growth, 
Fulfilment loftier of less-prophecy, 
Live reconciliation through dead June. 
E'en as May-song, made meaning, fruits and fades 
In wisdom of the million-marvell'd mind ; 
E'en as world's poesy grows mature, truth-stale 
Philosophy ; so truth world-conscious seeds 
Self-life in death of the world ; so to spring ever 
Poesy, rich innocence, beauty more and more ! 



46 



SPIRIT 

Clouds cool and luminous-moist as moonbeams float 

Pale, liquidly, in morning ; and cool rain 

Falls shadowy here and there down through the 

blue, 
Down on the dew-cool'd, morning green below 
Of the new woods ; that in the rays of the sun 
Earth, clouds, soft rain, dew-mists and verdure 

gleam 
A freshness and an inward lucency ; 
Sunshine in earth as earth in sunshine shown. 
Out of the cool-blown, moon-like clouds the rain 
Drops on the luminous land ; that the wet land 
Sparkles in sun's quick beams, each bud and blade. 
Briar and bloom'd tree-top bejewell'd bright ; 
Each bud by focus of enorbing drop 
Sphering the sunrise, each a full world-dawn ; 
Each bud and blade a life, a full, small world. 
Cosmos enorb'd in cosmos, sphering so 
Beauty complete, organic, self-sustain 'd 
In every heart through inference of all. 

47 



EARLIER POEMS 

'Tis a day-dawn of beauty through all things. 
Lush meadows, emerald-sheen'd in morning, slope 
Velvet with undulation soft, spread wide 
To slant beams of the sun ; or, in the gloom 
And shadowing of the eastward forests, purpled : 
Each blade an inference organic through 
Sunshine and rainbow'd mist — wide atmosphere 
And the still-dropping rain and clouds and sky 
Contributors to beauty of each blade : 
Spiritual so. (And shall not these weak sheaths 
Exude new moisture, new-breathed atmosphere. 
New clouds and rain again that grass shall grow ? ) - 
Behold the borders of the wood : low stems 
Lean toward the meadows and the cloud-canopies 
Above in the sun ; they burst, and from their buds 
Spread tissuey the translucent, web-like leaves 
Frail, gloss'd and hovering on the waft of the air 
For buoyancy and nurture. These by need 
Of the foster-rain and of the stimulant shine 
Are whole and beautiful and spirit-real 
For power through dependence, organized 
Sustainment through such instability ; 

48 



SPIRIT 

Mutual want ; reciprocal, sweet need ; 

Drinking in, drawing up, amalgamating 

Moisture and pasturage to breathe again 

An atmosphere out into the young noon ; 

By metamorphosis one mutual self. 

Nor is the unioning in beauty, self 

Organic of the maybuds, otherwise, 

Which through the pine-sod pierce ; anemones 

Of crimson'd youth and age-blanch 'd flower, the yellow 

Lily call'd adder's-tongue that to the rain 

Flutters and trips with leaf's smooth, mottled wing. 

And the clean, cup-like blooms of shrubb'd blueberries 

Or wildly-delicate columbine none less 

Drink in and render forth through the wide air 

Sweet interchange of pasture and of health. 

To name the multitudinous upspringings 

Organic of new, morning beauty (life 

Of the whole world in each conglobing whole, 

Each cosmos through each cosmos) were a work 

Of wonder without end. — Lo ! the tall trees 

Are blithe of blossoming, are amber, golden. 

Purplish and crimson ; tremulous, faint pink 

49 



EARLIER POEMS 

Against the high clouds shimmering ; or, within 
The sun-deep, sapphire, cool sky-spaces, glowing 
In marvel indescribable for spirit 
Drinking in, breathing out, over the earth. 
Even brown loam and gray-faced rock in the sun 
Are drinking, rendering, organic by 
A chemic congruence of elements : 
Whole beyond bound in cosmos, everything ! 

For all the world is morning-whole in beauty 

Spiritual for new breath perpetually ; 

Infinite for inversely-infinite 

Organization within organism, 

Self -world-determination. Lo ! for sun 

Manifests sun by atmosphere and earth ; 

Earth, self-seen in the sunshine, through each growth 

Knoweth a cloud-fluidity in all : 

Conclusive as the soul, being one therewith. 



50 



SOUL 

There is intensest heat thrill' d through all earth 

Quivering, reeking with sun-saturate, 

Upshimmering redolence ; scent smoke-like steaming 

From all leaf-pores of forest and of field 

Up through the tremulous, fervent atmosphere 

From earth as for wide altar, incensewise 

Spread through the cloudless heaven's hot vault to 

veil 
The presence of the omnipotent, to hide 
Splendid beneficence would burn too bright ; 
Though to the veil'd face of the god earth's prayer 
Is green and soft and glad to gaze upon. 
Incense earth offers ; for the power of the sun 
Thrills into strength a thousand thousand things, 
Flared fires of sap-life lifting everywhere — 
Green tongues of lambent, gleam'd fervidity — 
Up out of smouldering rock and loam and mould 
With odorous fume and pungency of blaze — 
Revivified. For everything of earth 
Lives but by interchange of strength for strength 

51 



EARLIER POEMS 

Now most, through springtime for such strength of the 

sun; 
Now most, when yet an incense in hot haze 
Veils the strong sun ; now most, when interchange 
Of breath for breath, of blaze for blaze, half -hides 
The fountain of high fire : yet hides not him. 
For earth's affinity, by aureole 
Flared up to sun's affinity (exchange 
Of fire for fire, of immanent return 
From flame's effulgence for effulgent gift 
Immanent) makes of sun, earth, atmosphere 
One mutualism ; makes of odorous woods, 
Reek'd fields and furrow'd, fumed plough-land fit figure 
Of facts' infinity by interflux — 
Nor god nor creature, prayer nor incense teeming 
From earth to earth's omnipotent; but incense, 
Prayer, praise or love the omnipotent, whose sphere 
Is day, spring's mutual interflux of flame. 



52 



WHITSUNTIDE 

Through many days endured a drouth : the heavens 
Heartless, serene, smiled sneeringly ; no soul 
Shone in the shallow, clear, untroubled sky 
Of sympathy, no shade of sorrowing 
For sun-scorch 'd earth ; but day by day the sun 
Flared white-hot on the wound of earth to blister, 
Cauterize but not cure the searching sore ; 
And the dry moon came dewless to day's thirst. 
And ceaseless prayer with fervid sacrifice 
To the hard heavens from earth sent incense up. 
Meek exhalations from the bosom of 
Ocean and fever'd lake and languid stream. 
Propitiation by burnt-offering steam 'd 
Of earth's best moisture for the softening 
Of dry heaven's hard heart ; even the parch'd fields 
Exuding a crisp, sere self-sacrifice 
Each of its best. And yet the drouth endured. 
Not by the plaint and painfulness of earth 
Seem'd the high, hard, dread heaven's heart stirr'd. — 

But swift 



53 



EARLIER POEMS 

Came there between the heaven and the earth 

A great, moist wind from the cloud -regions over 

The south sea and beyond the horizon-zone, 

Alive ; a great, wing'd spirit outspread between 

Dead heaven, dead earth, and reconciling both 

Into one heart and hope ; being born of both. 

By mutual wonder-woof half-witlessly 

Of prayer and prayer's acceptance. Though the 

heavens 
Seem'd to deny and knew but to deny 
Earth's prayer, and earth but helplessly to plead 
In isolation utmost each from each ; 
Yet was the heaven's heart open'd though he knew 

not, 
Open'd by pity whilst he yet denied, 
Open'd for incense and burnt sacrifice 
Mingled beneath the heavens over the earth ; 
That, when world's great wind came leaping, alive, 
Up from the regions of the oceans, far. 
From the cloud-chambers of the envaulting vast, 
Was the world ripe for its awakening : rain 
Pour'd from the turbid, piteous skies down on 

54 



WHITSUNTIDE 

The faint earth through the bosom of the breathing 
Of the great, moist, live wind. — And there is laughter 
Now of near sun in heaven ; now upon earth 
Green things drink in and feed upon and fill with 
Power and perfection of wet warmth inflow'd : 
New life, new interchange ; dead poles call'd heaven 
And earth, proved tropic, axial from the first 
As now ; in gyre of rain's quick pantheism — 
Their spirit, one great, moist wind infusing all. 



55 



SPRING-MOON 

There is moon-motion through the living night, 
Moist and awake with all sweet, wandering scents 
And whisper of the washings of the wind. 

Here is some shelter. But above (beyond 

These needle-muffling pines, this siffling sway 

Of silvery, slim leaves of the gleaming oak 

And tender-poised, new, delicate, lithe birch) 

Is a wild, winged sea-wind fill'd with the moon 

And murmur and moisture of the moon-soak'd sea ; 

An ocean-nurtured, strong wind, salt and laden 

With flowery, fresh breath of the bursting foam ; 

A wide wind soaking-up the spume of ocean, 

Sucking-in, drawing-down and sweeping-on 

Moon-moisture over the dim, silver'd land. 

And like the motion and slow murmuring of 

Moon-saturated ocean are the music 

Rhythmical of the shadowy woods ; the mist-wove 

Pulsings poetic of the gossamer grass 

Dank through the fields ; to metrical sweep of the wind 

56 



SPRING-MOON 

Nodding (like dance and dive of moonbeam-frosted, 

Drift-foam) in orbited elasticity, 

Fleck'd on the undulating bend and lift 

Of the wash'd field-floor beneath the ocean- wind. 

For, in the potence of the fair, fresh moon 
And of the moon's moist wind, all land like sea 
Is tremulous, surgent as with whisperings faint 
Of moonbeams blown like summer-wandering dews 
Through the bland air and over earth and ocean — 
One luminousness, as of night alive. 



57 



QUIET 

An odor as of moonbeam-blossoms, scent 

Of the sweet, white moon through the moveless leaves 

Falling and feasting well the dreaming world 

With perfume, with the dew-mild, cool delight 

Of apple-bloom, fogg'd grass, liquidity 

Of purplish lilacs, sensuous breathings forth 

Amingle with the moon to seem its soul, 

An effluence and a fluorescence floated 

Mistily languid through wan atmosphere — 

A moth with fluff' d whirr of his soft, furr'd wings 

Wanders awide and vaguely ; in moonlight 

Visible like some indolent apple-blossom 

Lifting and falling loose through the still air. 

It is a picture of the purest peace. 
Yet fiird with pulsing life. Dew, moon and flowers, 
Fogg'd grass and perfume and the languorous moth 
Are peaceful, beautiful but by their breathing 
Of light, of moisture, sound or sweetness forth : 
Each heart and life a focussing for life 

58 



QUIET 

Of all hearts else ; dew, moon and flowers and moth 
In almost-silence yet a power, a peace 
Alive — as peace is world-whole passioning 
Equable ; liquid effluence mutually. 



59 



FORCE 

A STRONG wind as of winter is awild 

Through the warm, summer woods, urgent, compelling 

Green boughs to utterance of music, moving 

The sun-world with emotion to a song. 

Even the moist underwood is scattering too 

Dew-pearls and dew-toned, liquid notes along 

The flood of the vigorous air. And flower and fern, 

Brimm'd of sweet incense and bewilder'd over 

With honey-wine, spill largess of their marvel 

On the damp floor of the forest ; that the wind 

Is rhythmic for the throb of metrical drops 

Pulsating, pattering, and for swirl of boughs 

Blade-laden with a pendulous foliage. Earth 

Is one rich plash, rich wavering of plumes 

Through the green wood- world. And tree-tops above 

Are chanting like a sea, with gusty, seething 

Sweep of the pine-caps and the tufted surge 

Of frothy hemlocks, with the burst of oak 

Rough as of heavy foam on rocks. The woods 

Above, below are wroth like a wild sea 

60 



FORCE 

Green, strenuous-voiced ; with flashings of a spindrift 
Spray'd, sun-spark'd from the leaf-liltings and quick 

shafts 
Of sunshine darting into the dim depths. 
The woods are all one ocean-voiced, plumed bird. 
One feathery-foliaged ocean greenly gleam'd. 
And blown birds from the shoals of such a seething 
Wing a wide way out over this green ocean 
With froth-like whirl beyond the hoary burst 
Of the boughs, birds swept and windily battling with 
The ponderous air and with the driven foam 
Below or driven flecks of the flurrying cloud 
Swirl'd through the blue above. And the sun*s light 
Flashes from their gloss'd wings as from the leaf-gust 
Of the flashing forest or the sea^s sun-soak'd spray. — 
For ocean under the gale is a spume-forest 
Full-leaved and lusty-bough*d, streaming awide 
To stress of the sounding wind and steep'd in light 
Deep to the roots of the quick-rifted waves 
Gale-concaved. And the sea's bursting boom of boughs 
Makes music of motion like the land's own voice. — 
That blown sea and blown land like great, glad birds 

6i 



EARLIER POEMS 

Are battling in their beauty, battling with 

Their spirit of the blue sky, whose life and motion 

Makes of all things a music-unioning ; 

With the free spirit of yon swift-off-sweeping storm 

Whose wintry-molten breadth beneath the sun 

Flows down the east, withdrawing gloriously 

As from a world for a world's work done — abiding 

Still in the world by world's work done ; by waking 

Morning to poetry ; earth, sea or sky 

To bird-like animation metrical ; 

To beauty of blithe unrest and sunshine wild. 



62 



MIDSUMMER 

It is the unreap'd season when the fields 

Are flood-tide high, are flush and mildly misted 

Over with moonlight-film of silver seed 

In the glumed beard and pollen-laden sheaf. 

There is no glared, keen, crude intensity 

Of heat's excessive zeal ; but mellowness 

Serene in a replete maturity ; 

No lavish-loose voluptuousness, no riot 

Wanton nor waste of the world's strenuous strength ; 

But bland mobility of throbb'd repose, 

Firm pulse of power self-whole and self-possess 'd. 

It is the long-grass'd season. Multitude 
Of sun-suffused, soft, moonlight-misted life 
Dwells in the fields : the purple-globed, cool clover 
Fluid to flux of the breeze ; and fluorescent, 
Wing'd irises, blue-bird-like, lucent-vein'd 
Liquidly fluttering — brooding through the noon— 
To surface-swell and ripple of wind-wash 'd green. 
And red wood-lilies preen and peer upon 

63 



EARLIER POEMS 

These people of the deep from the safe shore 

Firm-footed ; while along the grass-lapp'd land 

Freshly luxuriate in the solstice* surge 

Meshes of undulating vine, convolved 

With roses, lapsing gleams of the June foam : 

All rich, reposeful in mobility. 

Mildly mature as a midsummer's moon. 

And moonbeam-blossoms umbellate of elder 

Canopy the dim deepness of the grass 

To twilight coves, whose echoey, lisping murmurs , 

Whisper the stirring of the heart of the weed ; 

Where the dwarf'd cornel and stout pulpit-plant 

Take root and cling within the wash of the tide. 

Here are the many-fmger'd, legg'd and fmn'd 

Creatures of shallow seas whom the rank flood 

Cramps in their cavern-quarters : dusk-eyed moths 

Dreaming away world's plenitude of light ; 

Sheath'd beetles busiest foraging; blue wasps 

Drifting and darting, shivering the vague fern ; 

And warm bees walking in the bottom-weed 

For chillness and relief to laden wing. 

And suddenly some lithe leviathan, 

64 



MIDSUMMER 

Scale-coil'd in forest-fastness of dun earth, 
Starts, slides and sweeps off into the unreap*d 
Beyond, beneath sun's sooth deliciousness ; 
Leviathan, startling the sloth of the wave, 
Churning to spume, glint-bubbled blanch of spray, 
The swiftness of his thridded path and leaving 
Flexures subsiding wide along the shore 
And voice of heart of the grass in hollow cave. 
Spiders spin too from crest to crest of the green. 
Wind-wavering ocean net-like, filmiest traps 
To stay wing'd things to prey upon ; but beams 
Of the hazed, opal noon show these one sheen 
Pale, iridescent as of sea's concaves 
At midnight ere the moon is at the wane. 

It is the flood-tide season. The flush'd fields 
Follow the fulness of the sun ; as ocean 
Floods to the following of a summer's moon. 
And the mild moon mature, when sun descends. 
Glows mellowly up out of the dun east 
Over the moonlight-film'd and silvery-seeded, 
Glumed beard and pollen-bristling sheaf of the grass ; 

65 



EARLIER POEMS 

The cool, wide moon ; a silvery, gentle spirit 
Bland, liquid-firm as solstice-flowering fields 
Or moon's own ocean's luminous, molten flood ; 
A power ; a multitudinous repose 
Of beams in rich, replete mobility. 



66 



MORTMAIN 

MOUNTAINS, and fog enveloping : the hills 

Invisible, save near and yon an height 

Bald, desolate, primeval peering up 

To level of this desert pinnacle, 

Swathed about by impenetrable mists 

Of ocean ; an impervious, vague drift 

Up from the unseen ocean-welteringness — 

World nullified, made emptiness anew. — 

World was not alway so. One hour agone 

GlowM the clear concave high of sparkling, clean 

And vivid sunshine ; far beneath, the sea 

In blue-bright, silver panoply outspread 

With glittering isles and shimmering sails athwart 

These mountain- bases ; and these forest-hills 

Radiant of verdure in all marvel-shapes 

Of summer splendidness beneath the sun 

Steam'd odorous, alive with bloom and bird. — 

Nor in this solitude of stagnant fog 

Is world below quite breathless ; for a fume 

Of pleasant, spruce-wild, honey-tingling scent 

67 



EARLIER POEMS 

Steals upward mingling with the moisted salt ; 

And the voice of a bird, the tinkling, bell-toned tongue 

Of the thrush, upbubbling from the dead of the deep, 

Mounting and thrilling-through the void of the sky 

Till the vast and vault are heart and breast of him ; 

Till all the misty nothingness, denuded, 

Nebulous, old obscurity seems full 

To overflowing of the swelling hills 

Still verdure-vivid, of the radiant sea 

And sparkle of the blue and breath of the green. 

World-vacancy, how world-impossible ! 
Ever some pinnacle, some isle above 
Fog-oceans, sole-surveyor of the deep. 
For whom indeed the dark shows visible ! — 
Hark ! and the bird-song ! Soft ! The breath of the 
pine! 



68 



NOON 

Endless an hoary-hearted, gray-grown sea 

Bursts on the gaunt, gray sands : an aged shore 

Strengthless and sapless in a withering glare, 

Stiff-baked and parch'd save for the beating, salt, 

Sere surge of ocean. And a ghostly presence 

Of gray-grown mists from grizzled sands and gaunt, 

Foam'd ocean fumes and stealthily out over 

The young, green land through earth *s sunshine is 

spread — 
A shroud and sepulchre morn-saturate, 
Sepulchring, saturating world's sunshine. 

Gray vapors so from borders of old ocean 
Brood above land's young, green futurity 
Where crops are ripening, broad with gossamer breath 
Through filmy oat-fields whose fresh-seeded husks 
Hang pale in tassell'd tremulousness. The mists 
Make summer-sea-like the tall, pendulous oats. 
And undulations of soft breath of the beach 
Pass, wave-pulsations, over the blown breadth 

69 



EARLIER POEMS 

Of bristling barley ; and of mellowing rye 

Trouble its tawny-hued fecundities 

As with heart-beatings of primordial floods 

Inheritant. And over the long grasses 

The beach-breath floats in foggy fleeces, shrouds 

Their shoal, warm surging to confound the fields 

With sea's horizon and the sphering sky. 

And along oozy watercourses, where 

The slack tide-inlet in the marsh absolves 

Its brackish blue, the white fog lingers, steep'd 

In moist, hot sunshine and the glooming green, 

Making of marsh and fluid ooze an union, 

Sea both and shore : as newness of the world 

By perpetuity is endless eld ; 

Young, green land but as old, hoar-hearted sea : 

Land, all, or ocean ; sepulchred in mists 

Unioning, saturating world's sunshine. 



70 



MARSH-MUSIC 

A SONG of lands low-lying : moist July 

Ripe in repletion of green wilderness 

Grown rank and flowery fine ! The delicate iris 

Yields place to bright-spiked pickerel- weed. Wide lilies 

Spread open-bosom'd to the quickening sun 

Abroad upon the blue-gleam'd, molten pool. 

And flat, glazed pads bear burden of fat frogs. 

Fish leap. And many a purple, gauzy-vein 'd, 

Swift-hovering, darting dragon-fly makes flurry 

And film-like blur to brush the polish'd bog; 

Evaporating (to a cobweb) imaged, 

Sheen'd sky and bladed banks — where on the banks 

Tall eupatorium twilight-pink, flat-cluster'd 

Lifts dark its leafy stems. And sweet spiraea 

Weighs warm the luscious air with white, wan, weedy 

Odor of honey loved by butterflies. 

And song in succulent sunniness issues out 

From breath of the marsh in bubbling music. Birds', 

Bees*, all quaint manner of insects' notes, cicadas' 

And shrill mud-crickets' ; song spills everywhere 

n 



EARLIER POEMS 

All over the land low-lying ripe in the sun ; 
Song, fine for purple and golden growth, for glory 
Of moisture and green, flowery wilderness. — 
How make more joyous song than warm July ? 



72 



A CEREMONIAL VERSE 

Here is wild altar. And an incense wreath'd 

Of music melts along the envaulted, dim, 

Groin*d dome above of canopied rib-boughs 

Shadowy : music of a myriad mild, 

Croon'd wood-notes echoing cool through hollow dusk 

Of twilight leafage. Here are censer'd voices 

Chanting their canon-strict, in consequence 

Symphonic, cloistral through the sacred shade : 

Tone-dedication to night's festival. 

And ritual service, for the sacrifice 

Of soul to soul in self-devotion, sings 

The bridal in the ceremonial scent 

Of pines' aroma : monotone-response 

Low, broad, impassion'd as of priest. Nor hush 

Of wing'd assemblage through the serious aisles 

Is wanting for world's warrant ; to the vow 

Witness sufficient of the woods, with some 

Swift stir as of an eye to start and see. — 

Bring to the bridal savor of sweet turf, 

Sanctity of soft moss, enveiling fern, 

73 



EARLIER POEMS 

Shrine of inwoven ivy ; consecrate 
Cool-chaliced nectar to the forest-font ; 
Bless these to furnish bridal. Be the breeze 
Murmurous not alone with wandering moth 
Nor muffled quite in dew ; that pendent boughs 
Above, beneath night-skies shall shake and show 
Luminous wonder and far worship, stars 
Of still fire flaring and some meteor-gleam, 
Flash 'd for life's secret of the mystery. 
Light's self-consuming ardor unconsumed. 
Bring these to blessing : for the bridal's breath 
Gives consecration ; and earth's soul were whole. 

Here is wild altar ; and the nuptial earth 

Stands wedded ; for the wide world's want *s assuaged. 

It is close-woven night. Rapt atmosphere 

Feels exhalation of atomic heart 

In heart, warm vapor within vapor, dew 

Globule to globule coalesced to seep 

Absolved of turf-pore through the spongy mould : 

Moisture in metamorphosis ; earth, air. 

The holier by precipitance and death : 

74 



A CEREMONIAL VERSE 

Perpetuation but by passage, pulse 

Out of old longings nebulous to new 

Marriage, completion in life's change and loss. 

So through the solemn forest : cell with cell 

Of veinous tissue, as with bridal's breath, 

Breaks to the impregnation, meek conceives 

Sap to the framing of ingenerate 

New cell — leaf's reconciliation, life 

By procreant passing. And night's cloistral sound 

Vibrant, symphonic is but wedded voice 

Of chord-rasp'd chord, transmuting throb of power 

To power's metempsychosis, act's relapse 

Dyingly distant, ever-widening sphere 

Of married molecules, an unioning 

Existent but by ceasing, on and on. 

What of the ritual of the flowers ? Shall moth, 

Nestling to nectar'd lurement, bear on breast 

Fertility for sacrifice of sweet, 

Germinant potence of the seed to-be 

For rapine of heart's nurture ; and world's heart 

Not recognise seed's reconciling, right 

Exchange of death-through-life for life-through-death 

75 



EARLIER POEMS 

Not realize world-assurance for world-fear, 

Selfhood for isolation, consciousness 

Of love's divinity for love's dismay ? — 

Bless to the bridal nought of earth ! Earth's soul 

Is wide-initiate in perpetual pulse 

Of union'd passing, self-pre-bless'd. World knows 

Meaning of spirit's mystery and might, 

Love's soul-virginity of sacrifice, 

Self-realization by devotion. All 

Is wild-wood altar. And the priestly earth 

Stands wedded. And the bridal earth breathes whole. 



7^ 



CONSECRATION 

The year fills to the fall. A frosty feel 

Clarifies air, precipitates all fume, 

Fever and frothing of earth's flood-tide time 

Down out of opal atmosphere ; that flowers 

And fields, brown-gold and mauve and neutral hues. 

Yet gleam gem-like and clean for crystalline 

Purification of the perfect world. 

It is earth's custom so to consecrate 

Life as by life's completion unto death ; 

Bring forth, bear beauty in fecundity ; 

Just for the absolute lustration, rich, 

Perfect, the ultimate passing. At this hour 

Of the first cold, crisp frostiness and fear 

For final dissolution, dwells all earth 

Never more open, placid-proud and pure. 

Firm in self-dedication : sanctity 

Virgin, of summer laid in fall's dead bed. 

Love's realization in life-sacrifice. 

The year flowers to the fall. Earth's consecration 
77 



EARLIER POEMS 

Is intimate achievement ; perfectness 

Earth's preparation for the backward thrust. 

Nowhere is any interstice ; but life 

Teems and is multitudinous. Earth's passing 

Shows fruitage, ripening, an actualizing 

Of spring's potential bud and blush ; of summer 

Love's realization in life-sacrifice. — 

Autumn's are these grain'd grasses ; autumn's too 

The feathery asters and sweet-breathing herbs ; 

Wild-helianthus, jewel-weed, the wand 

Of sunny succory ; and the garden-glow 

Of melon-blossoms, hollyhock, bright stock, 

Gay marigold. And autumn's lingering birds 

Call and are quoted by the echoey sky 

In quavering, clear contentment. Fall's cool clouds 

Are vivid, plume-like white, wing-like of motion 

Through the high, sapphire firmament. And stars 

By night are cold-distinct and tingling-crisp 

As not in the vague dusks of earlier year. 

For 't is earth's absolute perfection, freedom 

Of world-rich, wonderful, wide fruitfulness ; 

Flower, field and leaf, wing'd insect, worm or heaven 

78 



CONSECRATION 

Each at top-teeming of fecundity 

And all-appreciation functional ; 

Life at the crown-completion : even swoon'd autumn 

Summer's strong wholeness and maternity — 

Function-in-fulness of the organic year. 

The year yearns to the fall. — Even as a bride 
Bowers in a beauty of lost virginity, 
Joy for love's power of sacrifice : so earth 
Feels death life's life ; and floods and fills with it. 



79 



RESfGNATION 

The sun goes down on autumn's eldest day; 

And stars come ; and the immanence of night 

Droops over earth : and it is time to dream. 

Time is it now to dream and perfect place 

Where vastness only and enormous night 

Include and ordinate, so sanctify 

Vague gloom to solemn majesty ; when motion 

Stands even as if transmuted into thought ; 

And only hush'd and high-starr'd thought may take 

Breath of the serious breeze ; when night with autumn 

Broods and revivifies the various year. 

Nothing in bitterness ! — Woods, nigh-denuded, 
In those slant, pale beams of the morning sun 
Have sparkled blithe with brittlest rime of frost 
As though 'twere springtide and the dew-dawn. Oaks 
Have flared a still-insistent flame ; thin beech 
Glow'd coppery as the bronze-smoked sky, more warm 
Than bloom of mellowing rye-field when the year 
Was newly motherhood. And sinuously 

80 



RESIGNATION 

The fold-on-fold of vine, in cataract 
Froth-figured, wave-like curl to rays of the sun, 
Saffron and amethystine, wonder-flush'd 
With glad glimpse of the orange-scarleted, 
Bold berries in between. — Are such the shades 
Of death-dismay for passing of the year ? 
And day's own dying ! Shall the gorgeous glow 
Of the blood-flamed cloud-region and the arch'd, 
Empyreal atmosphere and lambent, rose 
Heart-throbbing of the arteries of earth 
Seem absolute despair unspeakable. 
Irreparable for life's latest loss ? 

Nor year nor sun 's at loss ; for these (by death 
Of their heart's daytide and the flower of earth) 
In feeling loss their law, transcend, absolve 
And render over unto light and lust 
Of spring's renewal and the dawn-to-be 
Life's inmost moment of the dearth in them. — 
Still is it spring by autumn's dreaming ; still 
Remember'd day made manifest in night. 



8i 



THE BARBARIANS 

The swart, strong mass of mountains couch 'd at eve 

For sleep profound and peace : their forest-flanks 

Velvet with long glance of an autumn sun 

Gold to the day-down ; and the twilight-shades 

At mute, enveloping ascent ; and air 

Lucent with purplish exhalation, sweat 

Of steam, moist breath from day's work done : rough 

hills 
Calm, mild, gigantic, utterly at ease ! 
And a mist-purpled pool with swart, smooth breast 
Mirrors those mountains in their mass ; a lair 
Of cool sweet-water to the thirst-lollM tongue 
And soggM hoof of the rough, gigantic hills. 
Swiftly the shades ascend ; the tawny-hued, 
Autumnal foliage of the mountain-flank 
Mellows to kindled amber ; burns ; is borne 
Down out of day like ash with weight of night. 
Till to day-gone a ghost comes ; opaline 
Fluorescence, quickening of the gradual moon ; 
A cold gleam from beyond the eastern ridge 

82 



THE BARBARIANS 

Phosphoric-thrill'd as frost flared filmily 

Forth through the dusk : and day, asleep, hath 

dreams. — 
Lo ! it is night upon the mountains, night 
White on the mists of mountain and of mere ; 
Night, with dominion of the enormous moon. 
Lo ! the swart, rough-hooved hills sigh deep and dream. 

Some owl hoots through the hollow night ; the boughs 
Of crisp, frost-crusted hemlock from the concave 
Of black moon-shade reecho hollowly 
The hoot; and chill cliffs all make cavern sound. 
Hark ! a loon laughs and laughs ; the peaks again 
Have dream, and mock as cold, harsh hills alone 
Laugh, wan with mists and moonlight ; and the frost 
Creaks in the keen fir-branches. A slow bird 
Heavily beating the mist-beams, with croaked, 
Uncouth cry from the uttermost frontier 
Wings loudening way ; that gutturally loud 
And more loud groan the gaunt, crouch'd cliffs in 

dream. 
Some scared jay screams ; from vacant, drear oak-trunk 

83 



EARLIER POEMS 

Woodpeckers wail : the hoar hills scream and wail. 
Some deer stamps on the dull sod ; the hard thud 
Strikes flint, and shrieks ; and at the sudden speech 
Of rock-tongued headlands the buck bounds, betray'd, 
Startled and snorting from the thicket, breasts 
With sparkling, seethy plunge and crackling crunch 
Through thin shore-ice, shattering the lake's glazed 

moon. 
Thrashing to myriad tinkling discs and shrill. 
Metallic phosphor the black deep. The steep 
And flinty-horn'd, chill mountains clank like steel. 
Till on the night, heartening the old, cold moon 
To burden of yearning and her pulseless mists 
To motional effulgence, wakes a moan — 
A mourning, mooting, lorn cacophony — 
Monotonous from out the moss'd morass : 
Night's longing both and loneliness intense 
Throbb'd in the call. And those hoarse, shaggy mounts 
Make moan ; mourn'd, contrapuntal calling ; share 
Meaning and music with the self-sick need 
Of moose in her mate-mooding. Yea, jar and shake 

they, 

84 



THE BARBARIANS 

Obsequent, with a trampling, clash of horns 
On bough, swift thrust and firm, persistent hoof 
Of him, hills* monarch, who with strenuous tread 
Starts, strains and staggers through thick, ripping stems 
*Mid gorge-gloom'd fogs, obscure, moon-sepulchred, 
Dread-rotting forests and the rock-brow'd peaks : 
Moose, frost's hot despot and most monstrous dream 
Of those ferocious mountains. He shall pass 
Tireless pursuing. He shall burn a blood 
That wars and hurtles as the torrent-rush 
Of thousand rock-streams. Through impetuous night 
The nightlong shall he pass nor pause nor swerve ; 
Pass and keep passing. And the peace of him 
Shall be by passion's perpetuity. — 
Moose : through the forest an on-rushing rage, 
Even from beyond north's broad ridge-back, beyond 
Foreland and moorland and quick, tortuous flood 
He comes and comes resistless through swart night ; 
Lust's monstrous, mightiest vision of hills all. 

Such are the savage visions of rough hills ; 
Night's wrath, and wonder of primeval world's 

85 



EARLIER POEMS 

Grim-hew'd, gigantic, sinewy unease ! — 

Day breaks ! Black brooksides and the furry flanks 

Glisten for gorgeous frostlight. Sleep-lock'd horns 

Of the flinty ridge rouse up and sweep aside 

The shrunk moon from the western vault. Hill-shapes 

Rear, rise and shake night's icy, moon-born mists 

From heavy shoulders' rough barbarity. 

Soughs a breath-blare of breeze ; a quaffmg draught 

Sluices the lake, 'mid-stirr'd, to steely trough. 

Crest-blaze. (A sun-warn'd flock of floating fowl 

Wing flight with whirr and whiffling.) — And men's 

curse 
Snarls on the mountains; and men's iron hand 
Reeks with earth's sap of sacrifice. — Wroth world 
Starts forth to fight ; to prey upon and feed from 
Itself 's own maw exhaustless ; strong, swart world ; 
Scarr'd, gaunt, gigantic, cursed in hoof's unease ; 
Tremendous, terrible, primeval ; passing 
Resistless, grand, self-passion'd, calm ; ay, pulsing 
Peace-fill'd by blood's ubiquity of wrath ! 



86 



HIEMATION 

It is the first snow. And the scars of earth 
Are cover 'd. And oblivion descends 
Over old agony. And every ill 
Lies heard. And winter 's well. — 

Snows, marbled to a reach of coiling surf 
Beneath north walls, froth 'd combers alabastrine 
Of crystal-shimmering foam-frost in the sun. 
Poised in pulsation overpeer the pure, 
Plough-open'd lane like pendulant, frore fringe 
Stalactic bordering jaws of a bluff-cove 
Ice-lapp'd to stillness ; yet fill'd with the sun. 
Iridescent, sparkled for a plenitude 
Of fire-potential and the spring to-be. 
Or, where on marsh crisp tides receding leave 
Air-hung the sleety, crush'd or quaking caves, 
These with the ray'd, prismatic sun shot-through. 
Invigorate, flush as with a memory yet 
Of June green and the oat-fields' flood gone-by. 
That lightning'd life to-be with life-time lost 

87 



EARLIER POEMS 

Blends and is intermingled, lies transfigured 

In the instant, sun-soak'd snow-gleam. Even the blind 

Shades of sepulchral, drift-tomb'd trees bow*d down 

By burden of broad branches, their best dusk 

Yet bears to overbrimming the brave blue 

Of wind-wash'd, sun-steep'd skies above, beyond 

Spruce-arches and chill-canopied, dark boughs. 

That shine or shade alike, for crystalline 

Infusion, catch and care for, make alive 

In snow-light, the wide life of sun-steep'd space ; 

And are in winter's wealth world-reconciled. 

Earth-season 'd to the season of the sun. 

Here on the meadow-pool a breeze has blown 
Clean the keen ice ; that winter's world below, 
Life liquid-lens'd beneath the sun-glazed plane. 
Shows clear, cool, curiously with wavering glooms, 
Fleck'd twilights, flexures of conglobing beams 
On deep-brown bottom-mould like sheen and dance 
Of shine on shallow, sun-warm'd, weak-waved beaches 
In summer-time long-gone of wrinkling sands. 
Lo ! 'neath the ice small caddice-worms in sheaths 

88 



HIEMATION 

Aforth for foraging *mid musty weeds ; 
Trick'd yet in greenest cress ; that summer-hued 
They bide by winter's welfare ; nor alone 
Live well. For, builded by the pool, quaint mounds 
Of muskrats — reed-stalks, matted leaves, shrunk moss — 
Massed in old alder-clumps, rough-eaved, with snow 
Thick-roof'd, strong-buttress 'd ; that the swart musk- 
rat sleeps 
Through long, wild nights whose very wildness yields 
Austerest comfort, grim security 
To the domed lake-dwelling ; while, below, the lake 
Holds food, adventure, 'neath the glaze of stars ! 
Nor are the fields untenanted of folk 
Through the snow-season. But the sifted snow 
Serves for flake-tunnel ; larder large with nuts, 
Cones, seeds ; intricate labyrinth of lithe, 
Paw-padded passages — or the prick*d paths of mice, 
Four feet close-cluster'd in the leap, with tail 
Light-trailing fine upon the powdery track ; 
Or lustier lift of squirrel ; the sprawl'd spur 
Of a scrawn'd crow scavenging ; with here the sweep 
Claw-like of broad wing-pens upon the plane 

89 



EARLIER POEMS 

Of crystal pasture ; and the partridge' low, 
Long, lazy lunge of stride. 

It is the first snow. But oblivion 

Hides scarce the scars of earth. For earth lives on 

Self-reconciled with scars. For winter 's well. 

Vivid, awake with wonderful, white strength 

Reveal'd, prophetic of a snow-born spring. — 

Who would regret that earth hath scars and aileth 

All autumn long ; when winter is to heal. 

Make well the ills of earth ; when else were nought. 

No winter, nor no nurturing of spring ? 

Who can regret our mortal ill, when else 

White sympathy and healing grief's soft snow, 

When else earth's peace, were meaningless ; when health 

Of soul and sanity of daylight thought 

Live but by pain and sin ; when winter, spring 

Were nought but by old mourning of the mind ; 

When every mourning were by meaning joy ; 

Autumn, earth-worthy, for the fostering snow ? — 

It is the first snow. And the scars of earth 

Are cover'd. But reveal thereby her soul. 

90 



UNDER GLASS 

Here teems the sacred spark, earth ^s trust and troth 

Of the splendor of the sun through the sere season ; 

Lamp of the labor of the sleeping year. — 

Stout pistils, plumping ovules, quickening-sperm'd 

Pollen ; and parti-colorM spurt of plumes, 

Petals, pale sepals and strong, emerald spread 

Of leaf-stalks, netted, veinous for sluiced sap 

In the cells ; and bees with workaday, dim din 

Transporting, permeating, fructifying ! 

Color and fragrance ! Honey-hearted cups 

For the bees to seek and suck of ! These are priests, 

Torch-bearers, altar-vestals incensing 

With choir and chalice in the temple here 

The shrine of the splendor of the sun's own power, 

The spark of the full-flare summer-flame to-be 

When worship spreads and springs, not sole within 

Sun-surfeit of the sacristy but, there 

UncloisterM out beyond in June's wild world. 

These are the vestals of the vital spark. 

Chroniclers, prophets of those protean days 

91 



EARLIER POEMS 

When strength was, strength shall be of marriage made 

Now but in nurture of the nobler few ; 

Poets, love-devotees of the shrine, souls sure 

Of the plenitude and permanence of flux 

Procreant and the patience of sun's power : 

Who waits world's hour to work his will in the world, 

Working through these who wonder at delay. — 

Toward the sweet, streaming sunshine the swift sap 

In myriad cells starts up, swells, splits the husk 

Of thousand stems, in countless buds exudes ; 

Breaks forth ; and, blossoming, so blends in air 

With infinite beams through the soft-steam'd sunshine. 

Through the sluiced, swelling fibres myriad beams 

Impenetrate, impregnate, burst to a bloom 

The cell-bound sap ; blend and are interblent 

To mutual permeation and communing. 

Marriage and meaning in a myriad blooms. 

Oxalis amber, opening with the shine 

Of sun on the nigh-translucent petals, leans 

Lithe, arch'd above blown beds of violets swathed 

In glossiest leaves. Bush'd heliotrope beside, 

Purpled dianthus and the wing'd, white pea ; 

92 



UNDER GLASS 

Lance-leaved, clean oleander; gauze-blown grape 
Make marvellous the smell of air. And all 
Draw from the dust or damp of loam such scent, 
Power and pulsation of sap-union with 
The ardency of sun's down-flaming stream ; 
Each bloom a blending of the bloom of the world. 
Ember and embryo of sun's procreant strength 
In June-time when spring so to sap all things. 
Jonquil and daffodil, cool, bulbous bursts 
Of the beauty and beaming of the mellow mould ; 
Primula perch 'd and Psychic cyclamen, 
Begonia bunch'd in scarlet pendants, velvet, 
Furr'd cineraria : blossoms scant of scent. 
Yet each a bountiful, bright, prismic-hued 
Vestment adorning light's self-sacrament 
Through the dull season, scintillant, sun-soak 'd 
To fresh, firm flash of color, quick release 
Of the dun loam in delight of open gleam. 
And — for hush'd honey-smell, for honey-hues 
Of delicate transparence umber-fused, 
Yellow-of-lemon, streak'd, thrush-throated white, 
With flush and blush and orience of rose — 



93 



EARLIER POEMS 

Lo, shrubbed azaleas, flawless spread of bloom 

Fill'd with the bees and redolent of murmur 

Bland as the anthem of a May ; but border'd 

About with aureoled pea-spikes of the broom 

And baubles of the spined acacia clung 

Close in interstices of twilight, thick, 

Gloss'd leaf -thorns ; all, symbols of some rebirth 

Of earth to-be and patience of the passion 

Of the frost. And broad along sun-facing walls 

Peach, toned in tenderness of pink; or flooded, 

Organ-voiced effluence of the bridal-bloom'd 

Blood-orange, stupefaction, faith-o'erpowering 

Monstrance imperial of the priestly flame's 

Transfiguration fumed, yet cloistrally 

Veil'd with the intimate incense tropic-savor'd 

Of insect-apt air-orchids ; or chord re-echoed, 

Pathetic of atonement- won, from chalice 

Of lilies in still, paschal glory, gold 

Offered for flame-communion sap with sun ! 

Now is the splendor of the prime of these 
Which, inflorescent, keep alight earth's lamp 

94 



UNDER GLASS 

Through the sere season ; the sweet cycle of dreams 

Which inly keep complete the sleeping seeds 

Of annual orbit ; in whose heart the splendor 

Of ash-worn world is stored to smoulder, sparkle, 

Spurt up and fling in shower of brands awide 

A conflagration of all earth, awide 

Through wood and field and gardenside ; secure 

To seed, grow great and serve perennialwise 

The splendor of sun's flowering of earth ; 

Priests to the permanence of priesthood-lore, 

Sun-foster'd to make proselyte sun's earth. — 

Lo ! seedlings ranged of tissuey green in rows. 

Slips, scions, novices of cloistral nurture 

Ciipp'd from the culture of earth's green gone-by 

For green June-holiday and festival. 

Lo ! and, without in the world, wind, big with life 

Got of the south, transfuses air with savor 

And sweetness of the steam-exuding loam. 

Snow swoons and fades from off the fields. A flush 

Of rose-warm, amber, opaline blush-tints 

Shimmers through tree-tops with the bloom and burst 

Of sap through cells and sheaths of the swelling bud. 

95 



EARLIER POEMS 

Lo ! is the torch alight ; and world awakes 
To efflorescence. And the trust and troth, 
Lamp of the labor of the sun, earth's gospel 
Of priest and cloister and the culture pluck'd 
Of poet-spirits and sun's choicest souls; 
The faith of the few in patience of the power 
Of sun who works his will in will of the world ; 
The faith of the prophets of re- birth of earth : 
How strength, which was and shall be, still lives on 
By permanence of passing ; stands fulfill'd ! 



96 



THE GARDEN OF THE GULF 

Over the wide sea a warm, wild wind sweeping 
Sweet, swift and mild makes of the foam froth-flowers 
Quick, mild and moist ; a showery foliature 
Of soft, salt-scented blossoming, a budding, 
Blooming and frost-like withering-away 
White on the swirl of ocean blue in the sun. 
There are wild clouds shower-laden, sooth and dank 
Like froth over the blue sky scurrying swept ; 
Aloft, foam flowering forth from the wide wind 
Out of its warm, south bosom ; a swift budding. 
Blooming and withering through the atmosphere — 
Ocean and azure sky alike one garden 
Of vaporous iridescence, shower and shine 
For mist sunsaturate, for petals woven 
Of watery woof by sun's fine fingering : 
Seasons successive, surge, burst, bloom, collapse ; 
One multitudinous verdure, momently 
Full-orbited in elemental year. 

There are quick hearts and wild in sea's wide garden 

97 



EARLIER POEMS 

Leaping like light and wonder of sunbeams 

From flower to flower foam-crested. These with 

whirr 
Of whistling wings and whispering, lithe flight 
Flash silvery-vivid ; here, there, everywhere 
One sheen, one hush'd incitement of desire 
For tingling, froth-like life. These dash and drown 
In honey-hearts of the salt-scented drift 
Their crystal fire and flame. On crystalline, 
Cool spume they pasture and the lambent lapse 
Fluorescent, molten of blown pollen-dust 
Spray'd from the crests of ocean. Such wing'd fish 
Are bees of the garden of the gulf. — The clouds 
Feed, too, their wing'd life. For the stream of the 

sky 
Gleams with the glint of white plumes, in sunshine 
Snow-like against the blue, but in the bosom 
Of the cloud-hearts like bees or butterflies 
Lost quite for lightning of the chalice. These 
Call and make voice of the wild wind's delight 
Tumultuous, flung down from the torn and tossing 
Petals gale-shaken of the azure vault : 

98 



THE GARDEN OF THE GULF 

Meanings of waters and wide winds and all 

Mingled in motion of gulf's guardians, 

The great gulls angel- wing'd. And multitude 

Of purpled, tremulous shadowings deep down 

In hyalescence of the quivering seas 

Show burrowings of slow-throbb'd, subaqueous lives, 

Low 'mid the matted roots of the wave-blossoms 

Nurtured in cool and dimness of the deep. 

And along ocean's weltering rush and roar 

Frail, wingless, globose, iridescent things 

Swirl, spread like bubbles bladdery down the flow 

Of waves and winds, feeding from out the foam 

With deft, long feelers. And these ever flow 

And faint not. But perpetual frailty of 

These whirl'd seeds through the sea's sere agitation 

Makes of their faintness strength and permanence 

To feed and fill well from the unwithering, 

Live plash and lapsing of the gulf's great stream ; 

To pasture, feed full of the great gulf's strength, 

Of bud and burst and withering of foam-blossoms 

(Blood-beats perpetual-born of ocean's power 

Powerless ; one evanescence endlessly) — 

99 



EARLIER POEMS 

By equilibration of their life-in-death 

Driven onward : as the great waves lift and fall. 



100 



Ill 

POEMS PSYCHOLOGICAL 



THE SWIMMER 

Drown I ? — Nay, l attain and am with thee 

Safe from the flood, and young and strong and warm 

To love ; who seem'd but then so cramp'd and old. 

Cold and with boding as of Styx in me, 

Chiird for the Hellespontine flux and foam ; 

Till, lo ! call'd I on thee and once again 

Struck firmly forth and clove to the far shore 

So swift I felt not effort ! — At thy feet 

Now let me lie and dream a deathless love ! 

Yea, for we are as gods ! Had I but drowned 
Dreaming on thee, were Hades hurtless to me ; 
Only pale immortality of love ; 
Thine image faint and frail ever before me 
As, lo ! thou sittest fair — and frail and pale ; 
Now, now, I ween, half-fading so before me 
Here on the dim shore by the dark-faced flood ! 
Ay, as thou fadest ! (And I marvel much 
How thou shouldst fade thus.) Thus the love in me 
Would bide — half -faint — as now faint I, half-loveless, 

103 



EARLIER POEMS 

Here before thee ! — Ah, losing love, like sense 
Of thy white image and of dark-faced sea, 
Dim shore ; yea, losing all : as though I drown'd, 
Not graspM thee ! — 

Though, in sooth, I scarce could grieve 
Loss even of life ! — 

Nought now : love, shore nor flood 
Nor thou — 

Who art thou ? What wert thou ? What shore ? 
What flood ? — 

' Up bubbles all his amorous breath/ 



104 



CARRION 

A PAIN of the sun, piercing with beak and claw ! 
A vulture-tearing, back, above in the brain ! — 

Eternal tramping, tramping ! Ceaselessly 

The forward lift of the foot ; the forward swing ; 

The forward footfall : but to lift again ! 

Ever the body forward bent ; ay, bent, 

I say, by burden of the pack too huge 

For human, soldierly uprightness : yet 

The spirit human, still human-erect ; 

Forward, ceaselessly forward ! Here in the sun 

I toil, still lifting, swinging, plodding : aye 

Eternal tramping, tramping ; effort still 

Immitigable, nigh intolerable. 

Yet unremittent ; ever energy ! — 

The day wears. There was once a white-hot way 

Of sands and sands, blistering the soles ; struck up 

Glittering, ah, insufferably glared 

Against these eye-balls. That was long ago. 

There was a stagnant jungle-side, lagoon 'd 

los 



EARLIER POEMS 

And evil-smelling, glistening horridly, 

Unguently bristling serpentwise with fangs 

And poison- virulent pestilence. That was 

Long ago. There were multitude of men 

My comrades, scuffling up the pungent dust, 

Tramp, tramp, through mouth and nostrils parchingly : 

A suffocation. That was long ago. 

Men dropp'd by the way ; were left there where they 

fell : 
They could no more endure. (There was a bird 
Descending on the dead !) I still endure. — 
Now is no road, no jungle-side, no troop 
Marching ; but this intolerable sun 
Which tears the vital brain with beak and claw. 
There was a space, the shivering road uprear'd 
Stark in the face of me. I flung it back, 
O'er-pushing, clambering, plunging with my soles 
And shoulders till the energy of thrust 
Leveird the way. Which forthwith rear'd anew, 
Front to face striking me. 'T was long ago. — 
No road, no front-to-face blockade : but feet 
Steadily lifting, swinging, falling on 

io6 



CARRION 

Forward ! And only I am here with the sun 
Which pierces as 'twould burst into the brain. — 

What piecemeal tearing vulturewise ! What rip 
And rend of the scalp and cartilage ! — I turn ; 
Ward-off the ray with wrist and arm, defend 
Face from the onslaught ! — Whence this dusk I clutch ? 
This solid, struggling blackness like a throat ? 
Choked ? Strangled ? — Stretch'd in the startling night 

lie I: 
Death-grip of mine o* the gorge would feast too soon ! 



107 



THE NOVICE 

Soul that this incense stifles ! Suddenly 

Seem candle, censer, e'en the cross we crave, 

But mummery, a tinsel and display 

Where ne'er were substance. Fling the casement wide ; 

Let the unpainted moon, the vital air 

Of alpine altitudes, absolve this cell, 

Purify vestments of the charnel-smoke 

And signify a true sublimity 

Of inward freedom. How these grisly peaks 

Bear aloft horn'd and jutted crags to be 

A world of fearless godlessness ; a scene 

Of desolation verily, but grim 

With irony at any orphanage, 

With stern rebuke upon us hearts who seek, 

Bereaved, a god — by slavish worldlessness. 

Yet are we greater than our worldlessness, 
Greater than such unorphan'd, godless world : 
Who learn our orphanage nor faint from it. 
Lo ! I will forth into world-orphanage • 

io8 



THE NOVICE 

Of freedom, will be willess slave no more 
To innocence, mystery and God, I crave 
To learn aright night and this earnest moon 
Of alpine effluence ; and be as one 
Of these crags. Only, in the new resolve, 
Let me be potent as nor crags nor moon. 
Knowing world's good and evil, freedom and 
World's fear of freedom. Let me be alone 
Knowing my loneliness ; not then, as erst, 
Lone yet deluded to companionship 
Of stale chimeras. — 

Hark ! — Yon bell, which tolls 
The servitude ; and then these cringing cliffs 
Which chilly echo back the master-tone. 
Quavering the white light ! How the rich tints seem 
To glow again unto the note that clangs 
All nature to the sacrifice: obey'd 
Even by these alpine altitudes since men 
Have pray'd and praised these numberless, long years ! 
Shall dominance be ended? Shall there be 
No iterance, no sequent v<^ce to call 
Insanities down to the nightly stint 

109 



EARLIER. POEMS 

Of labor, weariness and rest in faith 

That truths are otherwise, that all we know 

Of beetling precipice and direst blast 

Are symbol, and the substance not yet shown 

Nor understood e'en of obedience? 

Pardon lip-blasphemy ! — Behold, I turn 

Dumb from my casement. Let the moon or stars 

See me, if they in any wise can see, 

Sink to my knees here of my cell alone, 

In full and reverent companionship 

With this dead idol whom my lips and heart 

Still shall obey. Close but the cold air out ! 

It chills. I am not fit for that live world 

Of fatherlessness and yon moon-gleam'd snows. 

I should not know, I cannot dare conceive 

A self-reliance beyond orphanage ; 

Day's light that needs no lamp ; a freedom aye 

Responsible through every concrete act. — 

Let there seem emptiness beyond this pale. 

Be there but incense ; God : and me. His slave ! 



no 



THE VIOLINIST 

SO-FASHION, son ! Sweep the stroke smooth and suave 

As folks approve ; not with such downright strength 

Of splendid earnestness ! 'T were dubb'd grotesque ! — 

Oh, but 't is genius, power beyond your sphere ! — 

We learn to bow well, learn to fret the string 

Quite at the common and establish'd nodes, 

Fit for performance tickling eye and ear 

Of the dilettanti, for attenuating 

Some truth authoritative set before us 

Just to be reinterpreted to them 

(The blind and deaf to need such minist'ring), 

Not re-created. Far less, lift we up 

Feeling and fancy (might I call it soul ?) 

For self -creation ! — So, so-fashion, son ! 

Play the piece deftly by the establish'd mode. 

Press to the pale perfection, seek technique — 

But no creation ! Son, forget the soul ! 

Ah, could but men be more musicianly ; 
Hear once the fiddling, not a thousand times 

III 



EARLIER POEMS 

Thus re-demand it ; ah ! ignore all else 

In rapture of the unrepeating score 

Soul-comprehended, free from sense at last 

By understanding of the visual sign 

Through one performance' pedagogy learn'd 

Forever, as we learn sans any sound 

To read and be at benefit by book — 

By breve and semi-breve, by staff and point 

Set silent here, yet eloquent beyond 

Any distress of horse-hair, gut and board ; 

Free from mere sense ; free even to surpass 

Yon score authoritative ; yea, to create 

Fresh music, inwardly indifferent how 

The master made the old tune ; tuning yet 

A phrase which savors of the master-make 

By very virtue of original 

Audacity ! — Ay, thus have I, my son. 

In the strong spirit of hours as keen as yours 

Years gone, betook me to the garret (great 

With enterprise — was it the genuine. 

High genius ? ) where alone, unheard my bow 

Fell noiseless, nor would fingers ache and smart 

112 



THE VIOLINIST 

Nor eye grow blurry with the plaguing page ; 

But music entering silently fill all 

Reaches and confines of an universe — 

Young once and dreaming of an art at birth 

And radiant ; which aye is for the few 

God -gifted ; nay, which is not yet, my son. 

Ah, but the rapture and the dreaming made 

An agony of every torturing rote 

So keen, so piercing, that — I earn my salt, 

Reputed skilful at my trade, a craftsman 

Well-paid and well-applauded. — Yea, my son, 

Ours is not greatness, high musicianship 

Of self-dependence openly unique ; 

But minist'ring which shall be greatly meant ! 

Dream generous dreams, be genius, genuine 

As may be ; nor forget the soul ! But let 

The agony of soul-relinquish'd (lost 

Incessantly and irremediably), 

Shot-through the quivering tones, teach unaware 

This throng an hint of splendor earth shall learn 

In other times by other strengths. Be yours 

The splendor even in forswearing it! — 

113 



EARLIER POEMS 

' Work, be unhappy ', but believe ! — Even so, 
So-fashion suavely sweep the bow ; achieve 
A recognised interpreting : but let 
Earnestness twinge you to the finger-tips, 
Music be misery : that your tragedy 
Be power ! Let soul but rend you, rote by rote ! 



114 



ONE WAY OF GRIEF 

Kind sir, I am a strong, stout-working man, 
Bold to bear sorrow — may such sorrow fall 
As mine on you nor yours ! You see, I stand 
Shaken, unstrung ; even though your sure support 
Steadies me somewhat. Whence you found me stretch 'd 
Here on the stiff, stark ground — I thank you, sir — 
I could not, though I tried till dawn, have raised 
Body of mine but for your lifting hand. 
For sorrow, sleeplessness and least of food 
Weaken the well and strong till they like me 
Weep as a child. — We buried her, my child. 
Today. And the week's work is done. — I came 
Forth in this chill and comfortless night-air 
Under these strange, far stars and heartless moon 
Here by the still trees for the comfort, sir ; 
Their calm, so to be friends with and grow calm — 
Out of my cottage. For, within, no stool. 
No patch of carpet but cries out her curls. 
Her lips and angel-laugh too clear and cured 
Of earth for captive in my cottage. — Sir, 

115 



EARLIER POEMS 

How came God grant a gift too good to keep ? — 

No bit of homeliness and everyday 

Where she sat, play'd her plays or croon'd her tunes, 

Snatches of song her own ; where she with broom 

Of fit, small size swept, dusted ever after 

The clean-swept footsteps of her mother ! — Oh, 

She had been sweeping in the passage (just 

Five days ago, 'twas Monday), proud and full 

Of busiest house-work, whilst I sat nor saw 

My morning's-news but casually made sport. 

Joked at her six-year zeal as fathers use, 

Her tireless will to work for work's sole sake 

(No need of any end or aim for work. 

Loved ones to work for, which we fathers need) : — 

"You Ml scarce work life-time long with such a will, 

Eh, child ? " But she : ** Father ! " — she ran and wept 

Wailingly : *' Father, what so hurts my head ? " — 

Then, she to bed in stupor ; nor awaked 

Save in delirium, sir ; nor knew me more. 

The mother ? Stricken from the first ; but breathes, 

Lives, lies within — 'tis of the child I speak. 

Sir, you will say she 's better-off, now dead, 

ii6 



ONE WAY OF GRIEF 

Than ever I could make her — surely, sir — 

If saved such sorrow's possibility 

And loss of all to work for ! — Sir, she was 

Our only child. I used to read her tales 

Of elves and goblins, talking trees — my rearing 

Brought me to knowledge of old-country lore 

And woodland fairy-facts. She 'd sit and hear, 

Say nothing ; yet a seven-night thence she M sing 

The whole tale word for word from first to end 

Straight out of memory to a wonder-tune ! 

Every man, every woman loved my child. 

I, sir, alone of men, my wife alone 

Of women knew what, every morn, it meant 

To wake at half-dream 'd laughter, some soft whisper 

Whirring about our room on wings from out 

Her crib beside the bed ; safely to stretch 

A hand and feel her two fists fasten mine 

To cheek and sleep thus, that I might not move. 

Sir, there 's no tale nor fairy-song now five 

Long nights, nor morning-whisper nor love-laugh 

In the cottage. — No, nor sleep for me nor mine ; 

Nor shall be sleep till we sleep with our child ! — 



117 



EARLIER POEMS 

Sir, I detain you ; thank you, sir ! There 's wood 
To fetch in yet for the night — my wife needs care. 
Ah yes, I Ve ample work to do — my wife 
Should die of this ; and meanwhile she wants care. 
Sir, I Ml be strong again and tend my wife ; 
Fetch in the wood. But, sir, save for my wife 
I 've nothing. When she dies of this, I Ml be 
But more unmanned ; only more like to bide 
Here as you found me prone without on the ground. 



ii8 



THE HERMIT 

Ay, 't is a desolate twilight. The dull rain 

Drops large in isolated clots upon 

The soggy leaf-floor. And the leaves o'er-head 

Shut out all sky save momently a cloud 

Caught in the pine -tops, choked and sobbing there. 

Ay, 'tis a dismal time. Yet just a thrush, 

Huddled and sogg'd as any old, brown leaf, 

Makes music. And I, crouch'd below in the dusk. 

Clasp close this rough trunk, hush'd as any tree 

And moveless save for drip and serious splash 

Of the constant rain on brow and breast ; am here 

(Until your coming, brisk, in comradeship !) 

Alone with fog and forest and this thrush. — 

Loud, sir : the song has ceased ! I care not now 

What wild thing else we startle, scare to wing 

Or covert; but will sludge along with you 

Supperward, head bow'd, feet at stalwart crunch 

And rotty crackle over quick and dead 

Of the wood -floor. What care I ? You are no thrush ! 



119 



EARLIER POEMS 

Nay, friend ; you sure are more than any thrush — 

Yet somewhat weak at woodcraft — say, too strong 

In sundry human sympathies to heed 

The tragedy of thus unsympathizing : 

As I feel tragedy in being a man 

Here and alone with thrush, twilight and storm. 

You prefer friends intelligible, shun 

Contact of creatures whose society 

Is no society in sort humane ? 

You prefer interchange of word and look 

Couch'd in communicant convention, scarce 

This isolation which we woodsmen know? — 

Slowly ! — And plod not on that herb ! — Take heed 

First of the primitive companionship 

We find of the forest, very like indeed 

To human sociability, wath certain 

Spice of an unsophistication, plain 

Expression of opinion, even if less 

Elaborate in the communal interchange ! 

Though first I will admit — he sings again, 

Hark ! in the far depths (nay, I stick with you !) — 

120 



THE HERMIT 

There 's nothing in the forest that *s not found 

In measure richlier, wiselier, niaybe, 

In civilization ; I am no forsworn, 

Unforlorn hermit falsely hermit-like ; 

Yet feel the fortune of yon hermit-bird : 

Feeling the counter-implication how 

Nor isolation nor companionship 

Be predicate of forest-lore alone 

Nor sole of man's society : but both 

Are shared. There 's interchange of word and look 

Scarce less complete in forest-lore than man's 

Society, if but our estimate 

Of satisfactory conference in each 

Be based in ratio to the tragic rift 

Respectively, take for criterion 

The isolation which we woodsmen know. 

In this our woodcraft, from these forest-things 

No more intensely nor preponderantly 

Than human failures at a fellowship ! 

Maybe, 't is the pettiness in this our rift 

Of the woods which forces on us to the marrow 

The civilization-tragedy : if more 

121 



EARLIER POEMS 

Society in humans, then the worse 
The inevitably incompatible 
Failure to comprehend, be mutual 
In men's assemblages — for me, for you. 

Tomorrow, haply, may I revel in 

The splendor, as the tragedy : not now ! — 

Friend, gripe mine arm ! There 's somewhat in this 

dusk 
That sets me staggering, that craves a crutch ! 
Thanks, thanks ! you are stiff of foot to straighten me 
And act my staff ? — Someway the loneliness 
Of noblest wood-communion but makes more 
Frightful-intense the apperception of 
Our human loneliness, our fuller commune 
We flaunt so glibly. — Yonder is the camp ? 
That flare means man's civility ? — Chaff loud ; 
Laugh-off the supper and the bedward time 
With forced free-fellowship : for fear I '11 dream 
A thrush sings through the hermitage of men 1 



122 



AN ORNITHOLOGIST 

* What overbillowing of a melody mad' ? 

* What untamed music ' ? Oh, their very names 
Mean each such twittering outburst rapturous 
Of strange, abrupt, ingenuous euphony ! 

Lark, oriole, bobolink : to title them 

Is song. * Yet surely not for sheer bird-song 

Haste you and hearken oft in the fields at dawn' ? — 

Patience, a moment (yes, the tune of the thrush) ! 

I 'm ruffled a bit, maybe, and must a little 

Out-talk the art you 'd scarce appreciate ; 

Who come to me for guide expert toward 

A half-sung trend of tones, unfinish of notes 

You sneer a slur to, ere depart with dream 

More or less disillusionized : man's music 

Shown more sophisticated (cat-bird ; robin — 

Mark both!) so better satisfying ! Friend, 

I see a fall of the face in you, not all 

Due to my voluble impertinence 

But some to the songs (an oven-bird : loud, loud !) 

You hear, perhaps, for the first time. Your own voice - 



123 



EARLIER POEMS 

I like it well — would satisfy you more. 

Not that I deem you ever would deny 

(Yon crow caws meaningly) a musical 

Value in least to this wild symphony 

You 'd fain stop ears at, while below my breath 

Thus to make sure you miss no worst of us — 

I garrulously (the oriole repeats !) 

Extemporize. These ritornelles, roulades 

(Nay, listen the bubbling goldfinch !) liquidly 

Lifted aquiver in tremulous air, were worth 

Elaboration or analysis 

With much among the lyric-laughs of men ? 

And yet (that yellowhammer 't is that squeals) 

Not musically satisfying, should 

Music be measured by mere complexity, 

A less and more sheerly, of bird's to man's! 

To me, forsooth, there seems an interest 

Nerve-occupying as with an increment 

Of complication — though the practice wants 

Comparatively in variety 

Of juxtapositions possible betwixt 

The variables, so is per se simplex — 

124 



AN ORNITHOLOGIST 

In the junction, human practice is not chainM-to, 

Of timbre-change each with a pitch-change, sith the 

bird — 
No two alike, maybe ; yet all, in sort — 
Alters the tang too with each rise or fall 
Of the scale — 't is quaint, 't is taking ! Yet indeed 
I blame you not; I, rather, were the first 
(Appreciating Brahms, Dvorak or Grieg 
In terms above those trailing geese at squawk 
High in the blue, north -streaming over the sun !) 
To forswear scarce-articulate ecstacies — 
It pricks me at the heart to spoil them, though ! — 
Fit for the forests, haply, but for man 
Childish as chuckle of that chickadee : 
Not but that there 's some manhood in a child ! -- 
Yet, hark ! a song-sparrow ; of all souls of spring 
The very quick quintessence ! — Feel you, sir, 
No soul in music, an overunity 
Ne'er-so complex'd ; no personal infinite 
Or man's or bird's equally live and free ? 
A self still self-express'd — even as mine 
Tormenting yours — a truth, nor more nor less 

125 



EARLIER POEMS. 

But absolute-like each personal containment, 

Or bird's or man's ; if only made mine-own ? 

A self, though less by the bird elaborate 

In cosmic-couch 'd projection, just thereby 

Serving comparison for base, for a mordant 

Of Wagner's tones as subtler than yon jay's : 

A self conspicuous, if by dint of foiling 

The piteous bird-inadequacy more. 

In bird as man ! And, though you hear for same 

Within the type of the species many songs 

Enough unlike to him who hearkens them, 

Yet how diverse these species which approve 

The world-soul ! With what utmost piquancy — 

As not in men whose much similitude 

Of caution and conservatism cultured 

Leads ear to expect the soul-identity ! — 

Of pure self -utterance 'mid these radiant dews 

And mildmist-manners of the sun salutant 

Here o'er the low ground, with all upper air 

At tremble, vibrant : world-enthusiasm 

Of a birdness ! (Hush ! My bobolink again ! ) 



126 



AN ASTRONOMER 

I LIFT mine eyes unto the stars whence cometh 

Help to the judgment of an universe, 

Unto the stars; and find their piercing sight — 

So crisp, so shimmering-keen of this night-frost ! — 

My light as theirs : and mine the estimate. — 

Long have I known and taught that what we call 

Copernican of divers vortices 

And various orbits quite doth supersede 

The Ptolemaic of the vaulted spheres 

Arch'd over earth for fulcrum ; long have taught, 

Yet never till this solitary hour 

Guess'd the true contrast nor conceived the law 

That regulates and reconciles both schemes 

Of Ptolemy as of Copernicus 

To one soul-systeming. The hour — this calm, 

Crystalline, steel-clamp'd, deep, mid-winter night ; 

The place and occupation — this untamed. 

Invigorating wilderness wherein 

I tread untrodden paths and track the world 

As the first maker though the way be worn ; 

127 



EARLIER POEMS 

The hour, the place and occupation all 

Conduce to clarification ; where this light 

Of star on snow-crust yields me estimate 

Of crust or star. I centre here alone 

Earth and the sundry spheres alike, by feeling 

Intensely so these vortices of sight ; 

Am Ptolemaic or Copernican 

By rich admission of the counter-scheme 

Appropriately. Hitherto I clave 

To the one, condemned the other. Now I cherish 

Both equally ; who first have found right place 

For either. — Is it, I have but just become 

Under the inspiration of this frost 

And star-shine such philosopher, as erst 

I would not be ; transcending, after years, 

The unsoul'd star-science ; by heart-estimating 

Star-shine, establishing truth's over-fact ? 

How long I had taught, old Ptolemy were crude, 

First-felt confusion ; and Copernicus 

(Or call it Kepler, who may heed the name ?) 

A realization and interpreting 

Of the fact in absolute fact-evidence, 

.128 



AN ASTRONOMER 

Sense-proven logic ! Such in sooth they are, 

I allow it yet, if sheerly outward fact 

Be all the evidence ; nor the estimate. 

Judgment itself, the sense to feel the fact, 

Be equal evidence ! How deep I had felt 

The dignity and grandeur of the change 

From the old-supposed, self-centralizing man, 

False pivot of the sun and stars and skies, 

To the mere man-item ! Now and suddenly 

I avow this very dignity for warrant 

Of proper pride, a self-respect achieved 

Beyond fact-deprecation ; pride wherethrough 

Alone this universe of self-neglect 

Can take its ground. In faith, the change were then 

A dignity and grandeur past compare 

(An overmanhood yet within the man) 

If thus interpreted ; though otherwise 

True, only were the spirit measured quite 

By lore too crude to comprehend the least 

Self-continence of mutual nebulas ! 

If ancient Ptolemy (Hipparchus* heir, 

Eudoxus* scholar) did but mistranslate 



129 



EARLIER POEMS 

Philosophy to fields mechanical, 

By the confusion undemark'd subverting 

Both disciplines to error ; none the less 

Did this Copernicus construct a scheme 

Of crude mechanics which we sycophants 

Have half-mistook for full philosophy. 

On, then, from both. — And sith these stars and moons 

Are utterly indifferent to my mass 

Save as I am of these a particle 

Thrusting infmitesimally (yet 

The more by virtue of such partnership 

And insignificance, significant 

As centre-pivot, focus, fulcrum of 

All facts experienced), so even each least 

Crystal and ray-diffusing molecule 

Of star-stuff estimates, conglomerately 

Systematizes in the mutualism 

Of apprehension inly registrate, 

An universe each of the farthest spheres 

And some self-focus. — Thus I lift mine eyes 

Unto the stars whence ever cometh help. 



130 



THE DIVORCED 

They say that you despised me, cheated me, 
Wrong'd me, a wife forsaken and forlorn. — 
I doubt not one sad word of all they say. 
Whence, sith the souls of many among men 
Were shock'd beyond composure should I yield 
To crime condonable and pardon you ; 
Whence, for the precedent of public shame, 
I brought a cause against you, made my plea. 
Proved the avow'd and obvious wrong ; so stand 
Clear'd of complicity ; redressed : divorced ! — 
Thus much for sop to custom ; in cold eyes 
Convention 'd with the vision of the courts 
I hold me reinstated, rectified. 
Such for their world of righteous wrath ! — For you ? 

How might I judge you ? I, who, in default 
Of infinite intuition, failM response 
Where marriage most were inward unioning ? 
Who lack'd of filling up that life of love 
Spiritual, inmost, your life needed most 

131 



EARLIER POEMS 

Where least I rose to rendering it : your want 

Passionate, intellectual, ah ! god-like, 

For commune ultimate, your soul with mine, 

In beauty of a deep-dream'd philosophy ? 

How I aspired to meet you, yearn with you, 

In you and through you unto those sky-depths, 

Forsooth, forever hidden from my ken ! 

How I aspired ! Yet could but half-discern 

Chill-chiseird speculation, outlines cold 

Of marbled ideality ; not feel 

Your quick, organic cosmos, realize 

Self-consciousness alive, complete, impassioned. 

Art-whole in worldship. — Oh : how I fell short ! - 

Friends (I have made such moan to) have rejoin'd 

** Yours the domestic, concrete, vivid love 

Of home and hearth and womanhood humane, 

The real, the Christian, the complete. His vague, 

Abstract, dim, universalistic boast 

Of pagan self-dependence leads, we know 

And you know — be it your consoling ! — leads 

By its own mystic emptiness to just 

Such isolation, aberration, crime ! 



132 



THE DIVORCED 

Comfort yourself that yours is not the crime ! '* 

Friends, I have made my moan to, thus reply 

With well-meant mockery. My crime 't is to fail 

Response where your love led me nobliest. 

Yours was the limitless capacity, 

I ween, for leading, drawing up and on 

(Ah, could I have made the potence practical !) 

Of hearth and home and womanhood humane 

To humane inspiration, love complete, 

Concrete, compassion'd most by widening out. 

Deepening down, transfusing commonplace 

Sentiment with a world-morality : 

Christ's meaning in the marriage of two souls. 

And I could not be led, nor make to mount 

Your wise way — and the breath lessness was mine ! 

Nor, that your faithlessness in falling short 

Of such philosophy's full working shows 

(However vile the fall, still equal-vile 

In the sight of each — as your confession proves) 

A flaw in the lute, a passion gone astray 

Unfunction'd yet in personality 

(Conscience organic of a moralism) — 

133 



EARLIER POEMS 

*Tis little ! 'Tis but point within your plea, 

Incomprehensible to both of us, 

Of our miscomprehensions ; yields no rod 

To wrathlessness ; nor any right to judge you. — 

I, whose own weakness wears the front of yours. 

By falling short of absolute matrimony 

(My failure's depth proven in your depth of fall) 

Forced your philosophy to fail — like vice ! 

Dear, I rise now to heights intuitive — 

Too late — of intimate philosophy 

Unguess'd before ; feel passionate consciousness 

Of our soul-unity when parted most ! 

I have indeed contested suit to prove 

Precedents in a world unready yet 

To forego righteous wrath ; whose righteous wrath 

Were wrong'd by less insistence. Though, for you, 

The fault is felt mine from the first. And loss 

Of opportunity to rectify 

By reparation is my cross to bear. — 

Cross ? 'T is soul-fate, self-fate unto us two; 

Not punishment sprung of the cold, dead law ! 



134 



THE DIVORCED 

Quick fate stands immanent already ; lives 
Through inmost overcoming in my love ! — 

But — for our two sad life-times sinn'd away ! 



135 



A CANDIDATE FOR COMMITTAL 

Am I the man who thinks too much, whom dreams 

Have driven now to uttermost disgrace, 

Save for this kind certificate you 'II sign 

Soon as the skill'd examination 's done ? 

Certainly this is I ; as you are he 

I used to know so well in student-days ; 

We two whose works diversified so wide 

Only to bring us face to face at last 

Here, and as now ! Old friend, I grasp your hand I 

Strange, I am cheerful, strong and quite sane now 

At sight of your keen, psychologic smile 

Working me wonders. — Sure, a strange mischance 

To come quite sane of a sudden ; when they say 

'T is but mine obvious insanity 

Saves me from ball and chain and bitter bread 1 

And you, the testimonial expert 

Of mine insanity, who turn me sane ! — 

Nay, do not interrupt me while I talk ! 

Let not your friendship fear to find me sane, 
136 



A CANDIDATE FOR COMMITTAL 

Friend ! For what can I care ? Such plea of mine 

Was nothing of my making. I rejoice, 

Now for the first time, that you scientists 

Know no compassion. (We philosophers 

Are all compassion to the fingers' ends !) 

Mine were the crimes, I grant, of overgreat 

Compassion ; charitable largess of 

Wealth not mine own ; misuse of misers' names 

To play the god with ! — Why excuse my crimes ? 

I claim no least exemption. I am sane. — 

Let us but feel friends'-confidence once more 

Despite the dismal years of difference 

And wordy warfare : science on your side ; 

Philosophy on mine who sought to prove 

No gulf irreconcilable between us ; 

Only a partial, preassumed, abstract 

Finitude for the flaw of your idea. 

Resolved and overcome and reconciled 

Even in the concrete unioning of mine, 

My principle of infinite, functional 

Godship determining a self-universe ! 

'T is ne'er philosophy that drives one mad ; 

137 



EARLIER POEMS 

'T is falling short from full belief in it 

To transcend contradiction, reconcile 

World-lonely love beyond world-agony, 

Include insanity and make it sane. 

I was not firm philosopher enough 

To find divinity through worst of dearth ; 

I was not strong to bear the vast idea 

Alone, unaided of your friendliness. 

Then too the combat and the bitter words ; 

A world for arbiter betwixt us twain. 

Station 'd between to separate ; when heart 

And brain as one — that friendship felt for you. 

One with the fresh philosophy I loved — 

Cried out how we were reconciled from first 

Could you but feel for me, but of me learn ! 

That was the agony : to combat so 

When combat turn'd both truths into a lie ! — 

You M rest in finitude for final fact. 

Accept self-isolation undismay'd ; 

Soar not to loneliness, love's infinite 

Conscience of isolation ? Friend, my soul 

Needs reconcile its loneliness or cease ! — 



138 



A CANDIDATE FOR COMMITTAL 

Now 't is but cure for such-like suffering, 

My terrible loneliness of brain and blood, 

To feel again your presence, know your gaze : 

That gaze which burn'd-through every page you wrote ; 

Explain as now, mind-intimate at last. 

Finally friend in friend ! — I go to face 

Judge, jury, all the court-room wide agape 

To hush huge laughter at the mumbling, marr'd 

Old man of many marvellous lunacies ; 

Face them nor fear them, fill'd to a firmness now 

With health and sanity of thought once more 

(Love's outlook of a mutuality) ; 

To front and bear the brunt of what may come. 

Disgrace if needs be, misery welcome now 

With such a consciousness of you beyond ! 

Only — your smile is wearing threadbare, friend. 
Have scientists compassion after all ? — 
Only : be sure you stand not far from me 
There in the court ; that I may touch your hand, 
Feel friends* -blood tingle, see your face in the flesh, 
Lest I go mad once more and scare them there. 

139 



EARLIER POEMS 

Forsooth, I am an old and lonely man, 

Worn-out with too much thinking ; and my dreams 

Crowd on me once again. You '11 come with me 

Now into court and sit beside me there 

While I show judge and them how sane I am, 

Braced by the bearing of a man like you ! — 

Truly, a fondly-featured meeting, friend. 

That brings disgrace in the end on one like me, 

Disgrace of too great sudden sanity 

For a soul worn-out with wrangling. Do we come ? 

The examination 's over ? Though 1 've told 

Not one word yet of how, when I was mad 

With loneliness — but that is gone-by now — 

How world-compassion — but I weep, it seems ! 

Come, friend ! — That paper in your hand, I trust. 

Holds all I Ve told you ? Your psychology 

Will profit much by just my case in point 

Of how a frail philosopher went mad 

For loneliness of too strange thinking ; fell 

Sane again of a sudden — 

Ha ! not leave 
Me here alone with these who hold me here ! 



140 



A CANDIDATE FOR COMMITTAL 

Never alone, friend ! I MI be with you still ! — 
Ha ! he is gone ? And I 'm not there to tell 
The court how sane I am ? 

Men : am I mad ? 



141 



THE CONVALESCENT 

LO ! 't is the earliest glimmering of dawn ! — 

I wake ; and grow, even with the growing day. — 

The names of flowers told unceasingly 

In fragrant, fresh reiterance ; the green, 

Cool and delicious energies of earth 

One by one conjured up and one by one 

Brooded, made vivid and adored. Nay, first 

Ere these, the names of all earth's atmosphere's 

Mighty emotions ; thunders, clouds, the winds 

Out of the east, north, west and south ; all aspects 

Of sun and storm, earth's weathering. The mountains 

And ocean-depths, earth's multiplicities 

Are told. — And with the telling, tone by tone, 

Comes health back ; finds the soul a sympathy 

Of insight and a strengthening by strength 

Of the primal health and lustihood of earth. 

Ay, and as strength in the contemplating 

Springs gradual, grows a sympathy again 

For reptile, bird and brute in heartiness 

142 



THE CONVALESCENT 

Each living out the loftier life than earth's, 
Grasp'd by the soul at each ascent, each pulse 
Of the life-renascence. And to childhood last 
Its innocent, fair, fresh humanity 
Grows the expanding insight ; and I dream 
Of all ingenuous childnesses, all young. 
Whole-hearted, white expectancies. And shall 
Doubtless anew learn sympathy with men 
And women, learn responsibility 
Now long precluded } — Softly : 't is not yet. 
I have been shut from mixture with my world. 
I have been very low 'twixt life and death. 
I learn life slowly ; must learn thoroughly 
The lowlier and the lost ere, once again. 
Maturity and whole humanity — 
Achieved at last as never felt before ! 
For a fine fancy fills me how such lost 
And lowlier life-aspects teach and show, 
In manner to the need most suitable. 
The loftier energy : how life and health 
Now learn to absorb, evalue for the first time 
A wealth, a richness hitherto ignored ; 

143 



EARLIER POEMS 

Transcend indeed by vividly realizing 
Each item long since relegate, nigh-scorn 'd, 
Out of life : life then emptiest, lacking quite 
Childness and animal insistency, 
Plant-passion, ambience of atmosphere. 

Thus, for the nonce while here ensconced I lie 
'Mid glimmering walls, to learn and never lose 
Health's wild-world richness ; nor let slip the chance 
(Ere health's responsibilities obscure) 
To broaden out with daylight's pyramid 
Earth-based, not apex-balanced. Sooth, the plant 
Seems explicable (to this twilight mood 
At least of half-health) but by lust of earth 
And lift of atmosphere, by sun and rain ; 
A focusship and spherehood known and felt 
Best in the primal postulate of loam. 
Sure, and the sun and storm, the lust and lift 
Were known and comprehended mainly by 
Some lowlier, weaklier lust and lift supposed. 
Assumed subservient; geogonic births 
Themselves unmediable, taken on trust ! 



144 



THE CONVALESCENT 

Yes, and what symbol of an atmosphere, 

Of element-emotion, each the least 

Or greatest of soul's vegetations ! Lo ! 

Naked, up-piercing shafts that mean the sun 

'Mid thicket-strugglers ; or the verdure-clothed. 

Squat staff which, basking unimpeded, means 

The sun too : each, a consciousness of need 

For sunshine in a various phase and place. 

And rain ? Intended by each succulent cell 

Of close-oozed tissue ; whether netted wide 

Twixt strong, rib-trussing veins, else laid along 

Bladewise ; sluice-succulent through every shape, 

Sensible, sympathied of sun and rain ; 

Mingling and melting updrawn energies 

Of loam with immanence of atmosphere— 

A vegetative physiology 

Indeed by adaptation, unioning 

Of elemental chemistries — so known. 

So felt and so made flesh of the flesh of me, 

Parcel, participation in mine health. 

Basal of pyramid as ne'er before — 

By convalescence, growth in health along 

145 



EARLIER POEMS 

With earth's less-growths ; from stage to stage, mine 

earth ! 
And for the intermediate animal, 
The self-adaptive not alone to sun 
And rain, to loam and atmosphere, but yet 
To vegetation-immanence as well, 
To growth of the succulent stem and spreading branch 
Transcended as by an internality 
More mark'd, an elemental structure less 
Unmediate — an inherence none the less 
Still elemental as still vegetative ; 
The animal-intense so understood 
By synthesis of element-through-plant, 
Of plant-through-element inversively : 
Made animate by the reconciling. Thus 
My health grows, shall be builded bit by bit 
Of the intermediate richness, tier by tier 
Crowning the undergrowth and proven mine 
But by the structural basing solidly. 
The convalescence with the untamed-intense 
So gain'd and grasp 'd for explanation of 
The old, lost childnesses — of childness reached 

146 



THE CONVALESCENT 

By reapproach, by growth up from beneath 

Gradual, so appreciative, real. 

Yes, at a stroke, one fire of fever, fell 

The towering of mine emptiness, my spirit 

Struck down beneath even those earth-elements 

Unseen before for substantive, essential 

To any soul, true union through a world ! — 

Struck down if for this saving benefit 

Of gradual recuperation — now 

An element, now planthood, now crude brute; 

And now, contemplative, the undismay'd 

Expectancy of childness, richliest fill'd 

Just by the convalescence ; stoutliest based 

In the learning (point by point of soul's past peril) 

Of the deathward-tottering in vacancy ; 

A tottering now impossible for nerves 

Tension'd and strenuous, no doubt, yet whole 

By conscious earth-inclusion, by the feel 

Of less-things reconciled, vicariously 

Aye to be cared for. 

Shall the workless child, 
Contemplative, the mere analysis 

147 



EARLIER POEMS 

Or synthesis, the science sheerly, stay 

My soul from full recuperation, strong 

In ripe capitulating, strength by strength, 

Of man's own world-responsibilities ? 

No ; no. The apex of the pile o'er-peers. 

Caps and concludes the geometric mass 

Of all ; is by its height not peak alone 

But pyramid made perfect in the peak. 

Made pyramid of tier and tier best by 

The consummation, most self-realizing 

By ultimate angulation of the height 

For height's sake, therefore for the pile beneath. 

Were element but nebulosity ? 

Were plant but heterogeneities 

Of sun and rain, of loam and atmosphere 

Or any sum, agglomerance of these ? 

Were the live beast a mere collective coil 

Of vegetative functions cellularly 

Carcass-like, irrespective of the brute-zeal 

Different in kind, in quality from plant 

As plant from loam — distinction absolute, 

If but by the relativity involved ? 

148 



THE CONVALESCENT 

Were child quite explicable (nay, defined 

In truth), were I, this sicklihood, made plain 

To health, as some amalgamative group 

(Whence, then, the novelty, the need for proof ?) 

Of animal physiologies ? Were man 

Of world-responsibility but childness 

With childness iterated till mere stress 

Of multiple childnesses exhaust his soul ? 

And though child, brute, plant, earth were each in sort 

Responsible, total ; yet for the full man 

(As for the child, brute, plant toward less-things each) 

Remains the child's, brute's, plant's inadequacy — 

A problem — by their difference in kind. 

No synthesis of merely elements 

Were plant, no synthesis of brutes were child ; 

Nor shall mere synthesis of childhoods grow 

(Mere duplications of this flaccid pulse) 

My manhood and responsibility, 

My self-initiative, vital blood ! 

The synthesis is more than synthesis, 

An integration over and beyond ; 

A qualification : as analysis 

149 



EARLIER POEMS 

Deintegrates, annihilates beside. — 

No sentience solely, but an actual zeal, 

Passion of overunion, consciousness 

Of mutual meaning in the childness now 

Of contemplation ! And my soul at last 

Shall realize, appreciate best by 

Synthetic cosmos-creativities 

This patient mediation ; working best 

In and through past and lost, planthood and child 

By being best actively the strenuous man 

Of analytic-sympathy, none less 

High self-assertion, self-transforming all ! — 

Though for the nonce (because breath flutteringly 
Warns moderation and the lean hands clutch 
Nerveless the light, and sudden sinkings qualm 
The flush 'd frame) first learn patiently the lesser 
And lowlier, lay the tier-on-tier whereby 
Alone were apex, apex ; health, I ween. 
World-worthy ! Be the name of element. 
Of wind, sun, rain and atmosphere, the title 
Of planthoods told unceasingly ; that strength 



150 



THE CONVALESCENT 

(Slowlier than morning on my four wan walls) 
Grow gradual, strength by strength, up through ; ab- 
sorb. 
Resolve by sympathy a nascent soul ! — 
Wherefore anew the brooding ; vividly 
The adoration convalescentwise. 



THE BLOCKADER 

Shadows of sea-birds circling ; swift-swept clouds 
Whitely sun-steep'd ; flash of the showering wave 
Aquiver and wonderful for emerald depth ; 
Swish of the spray, soft, ice-like, keen as steel ; 
And over all, through all, the streaming, strong, 
Salt wind, broad-blowing, vigorous with light, 
Warm with the warmth of ocean, sun and sky, 
Day after day out of the east and o'er 
And on and never ceasing. And the ship, 
Sole sentinel upon the weltering sea, 
Heaving and settling, slow, majestical 
To lift and fall of each next, ponderous surge — 
Surges o'er-beetling, concaved ; one and one 
Upbrimming huge beneath us, till compress'd. 
Tense-smooth 'd with foam thwart-lapsing to the trough, 
Passes the power and onward, aft and aft. 
One beyond one relapses distantly 
Convex, elastic, liquid-turbulent, 
Aleap for riddance of the weighty bulk. 
Westward adown the gulf. And day by day 



152 



THE BLOCKADER 

Sun, from the east burning above us, orbs 

Archwise to westward ; while, between, the clouds 

Swing hurrying shadows. Night by night the stars 

Multiple, or the heaven-hung, mild moon 

Through phase and phase, ever from east to west 

Lift, tower and fall again : beneath, above. 

One weltering and one processioning 

Unendingly. And, amidst all, the ship 

Sentinel, steadily lifting, falling ; swamp'd 

In the trough, upthrustto the crown; wash'd, deluged, 

drowned 
To rear again with bows a cataract 
Of torrent riddance, spume arinse in spouts 
From scuppers, hawse-pipes ; daylong blister'd, burn'd 
By fire above ; nightlong beneath the bland 
Star-sparks assuaged or emberlike by moon 
In soothness saturated — aye the same : 
By pride-perversity unyieldingly, 
A sentinel at stand in the shallow seas ! — 
And I too, sentinel on steaming decks, 
Stand spray'd and spumed upon ; burn'd black, or 

blanch'd 



153 



EARLIER POEMS 

In splendor of the night ; blown warm or chill ; 

Shadow'd by cloud ; bescream'd by the swirling gull, 

Circled by laboring pelican, by flock 

Of swift shearwaters ; whisper 'd by the swish 

Of the foam, by whistling of the silvery flash 

Call'd fish : stand I at solemn lift and fall 

By pride-perversity unyieldingly 

Ceaseless a watch over the shallow seas. 

And by much watching, much contemplating 

Of sun and sea and sky, with respite from 

Conflict at quarters to keep brawn and brain 

Keen for destruction and the cursed assault. 

Widens the soul, to heed this stream of the wind, 

Sense wash of the wave and orbit of the sky ; 

Take permeation by sun, air and sea 

Their onwardness ; and onwardness with theirs ; 

Take disavowal of persistent stand 

And pride-perversity unyieldingly : 

Impatient, as with sea and sky and air, 

Petulant of impertinent blockade. 

I am mid-aged ; the liberality, 

154 



THE BLOCKADER 

Launched late. From earliest youth conservatism 

Of obsolete, stiff-bluff' d barbarity 

Caird bravery and martially esteemed, 

Has been mine ; in oblivion of the blood's 

Insistent pulse, has cold obedience 

To worn, old ways of masterful, hard men 

Been mine — train'd strait in tactics of the schools 

To do out duty, whosesoe'er the soul 

(Though haply pinch'd and sordid, mean and cramp'd. 

Yet ranking by commission beyond mine) 

Assumes superiority for source 

Of absolution as for dominance. 

I 'd be too strict, too much this ship's machine. 

Too sage, perhaps, with awe traditional 

Tempering the heart, blood-reverence for law. 

Authority and hierarchy here 

For recusance : so by the base default 

From oath, from loyalty of personal pledge, 

To bring disgrace, their yard-arm disrepute 

On the young emancipation ! Yet the new 

Intelligence absolves from ordinance 

Of any aged, seaworthless shrift this soul 

155 



EARLIER POEMS 

Staunch to weigh well the due of years to-come 

Toward adequate self-consistency. I stand 

Officer of the deck, drill-martinet 

Of the schools, train'd product of the rule precise 

Unflinching and immitigable : man 

Made sheer machine (an the code's imperative 

Suffice to blot, obliterate a soul ? ) ; 

Sentinel of a system, genus-type 

And sign of mundane pride-perversity; 

And must stand till some chance, spent shot dis-jar 

The pinion, stanchion, whatnot which I am. 

To rust and rest in the deep — while clanks and thumps 

A sound steel in the socket ; and the ship 

Still throbs a bloodless, sense-obliterate, 

Dull grinding as the system still must front 

World's onwardness, keep bows (meant to push o'er, 

Swift with the wind and wave ! ) breast-on to the surge. 

But, for the instant need, be soul's relief. 

Respite in freedom of conceived revolt ! — 

I am aware this figure of my speech 

Is insufficient, pitifully prone 

To misconstruction if the adequate whole 

156 



THE BLOCKADER 

Be based on such projection. Heaven and earth 

In any onwardness which is their own 

(Our physics teaches) are at worst a loss, 

At best a nigh-reiterant energy, 

If progressive, ay, even as regressive. 

Less adequately than man's mood demands 

Or man exhibits; civilization's swing 

And sweep by far outstripping sun or sky. 

Salt wind or ocean in their stale intent 

Ail-too primordial, effete far worse 

Than any slavishness of humankind : 

Molecules, whose world-adequacy mark'd 

Archaic eons of cosmogeny; 

Which, since first, palaeozoic protoplasm. 

Have slunk ashamed (I credit them with shame 

Too generously ? ) save as evolving fresh 

In each fresh, plasmic cell-stuff not themselves. 

Yet is there somewhat splendid to the sense 

In sweep of the sphere 'twixt sea's horizon-round 

And sea's horizon-round, procession'd swarm 

Sufficient for man's metaphor to fuse 

Mine with the life which, ne'er so slave, at soul 



157 



EARLIER POEMS 

Still liberally moves and onwardly 

(If poised in orbit, yet criterial thus) 

As such may, marvellously moulds each old 

In new ascendency unwearyingly — 

Petulant of impertinent blockade. 

And man, who knowing onwardness yet waits 

Wanton in sloth, is by the conscienced shame 

Thus much the less akin to sky and sea. 

Wherefore in sight of sky and sea I stand 

For obsolescence and a worn-out way ; 

For abnegator, unresponsible, 

Absolved from conscience ; and yet none the less 

Knowing the lordlier conquering that comes 

By soul-inclusion and the lifting-on, 

Not by the crushing-back. This wide insight, 

This permeation through sun, sea and sky, 

Lifts it not these in me by metaphor 

To mighty onwardness inspiring all. 

Beyond mere molecules* redundant drift 

Of stale, primordial, atomic dearth ? 

Stand I not here and now (a mere machine, 

A martinet degenerate by test 

158 



THE BLOCKADER 

Of modern liberation) yet by strength 
Of confluence a soul, a spirit anew, 
A liberation of an universe ? — 
I free my soul-speech even from the cant 
Of watch-word, technic of the dismal drill. 
Cult of authority that, absolute 
But by inconsequence and ignorance, 
Now melts from mind as yonder drench of spume, 
Sea's obsolete, old inefficiency 
_( Which served, maybe, to heed me of my soul) 
Drips from the breast of the ship I fain would shake 
Aloft for men to marvel at, a new 
Signal of self-responsibility — 
Ensign of absolute deliverance ! 
Yon admiral should startle from his sleep 
Of savage dreams ; and in the desperate. 
Sublime refusal sense this soul at last 
Of the world and world *s repugnance of command 
Not based on a world-whole conscience : and man 's 
best!-- 

Man's best! Can mutiny be meant by that? 

159 



EARLIER POEMS 

Can world-whole conscience countenance a lie, 

Countermand mandates if but primitive, 

Yet preacknowledged to allegiance sworn ? 

Desertion ?— Nay ! the duty first self-imposed 

In voluntary self-abandonment, 

Were prime of obligations as of rights ! 

If that the shackles thwart the truth at growth 

(If I be wiselier I than formerly 

And irk'd by dead-hand of the self that was), 

Yet law is Soul for souls self-bound thereby 

(And I continuously self the same, 

Accountable to every earlier oath ! ) . 

And orders and authorities have place 

For him, yon admiral, for these my crew 

(He over me as 1 am over them) 

Incapable, either, of self-governance else ! 

Nor mine the self-governance save soul include. 

Contemplate, so subordinate, their zeal 

For the wrong way of the world ; and work through 

them 
Not self -disgraced, but by a sage respect 
For pledge and patience of the personal vow 

i6o 



THE BLOCKADER 

In the sight of all ; by consequence of soul 
True to the old, worn ways made obsolete 
But wonderfully luring on, in law 
Of absolution by the self-command — 
Man out of molecule but by molecule still 
At self-evolvement ! — 

Sail ? A sail ? Escaped 
The slipperier while I 'd speculate : blind, blind 
Through conscience' utmost clarity ? — 

** Give chase! 
Solid shot!" Ho! She shall not break blockade I 



i6i 



THE PATROL 

Huge, phosphor-gleaming surges 'gainst the dim, 

Wind-scurrying sands burst mountainous from out 

Yon tumult, from yon blackening confront. 

Out-tower and overpeer ; to crash in ruin 

With roar above the roaring of the gale 

Froth 'd on the spume-slant: an insatiate, vast, 

Unsealike vagueness and a chaos made 

Of unbeginning, unreturning waste 

Where once was water. And overhead the clouds 

Low, swift as swept smoke, dun and dusk rack on 

Coast-long : a merging of beach both and surge 

To nought. And, dank beneath the dunes, bleak lands, 

Bog-like and naked of all trees, shake, shiver 

In flat-blown sheet of sedge-blades, lowering, hoar 

As each gust greater than the last lays low 

Their crushed and cowering stem-cells. And, save sedge 

So shrouded this land's nakedness, were earth 

Engulf'd, long since blown wide, else swallowed by 

These surf-gulps. And this desolation seems 

A terrible and tragic reckoning, 

162 



THE PATROL 

Quintessence and a focussM figurehood 

Of world's stark orphanage : how only cloud 

Insensible and gale unmeaning, by 

Effort to wipe out land or sea alike 

To indiscernibility, are given 

For reconciling's stead ; and mockingly 

(For union of a living sea and land) 

In irony bewilder this wild beach 

With sifting aye and sifting, bolting o'er 

Unalterably all these myriad sands 

Sans place or order. I alone of the night 

Seem life, seem order-borne : yet mockingly 

Lost in mine effort to be guardian 

Of sea or land ; seem utterly like gale 

Or surge or cloud-rack or these withering blades, 

An irony and chaos. I, like light 

Before the world-creation, am nor man 

Nor earth nor waters which be over earth 

Nor beneath earth : the demarcation stopp'd 

And world run backward till before the light 

Came or the waters were beneath, above. 

Here, yon nor anywhere. And I, alone, 

163 



EARLIER POEMS 

Unaided fall to chaos and am spent 

By soul's exhaustion. Here on the sands I sink 

But to be buried, sifted ten times o'er 

With scurrying silt-storms ; and am miserably 

Perishing for this orphanage, this world 

Orderless, godless, uncreated, nought ; 

The iteration and reiterance 

Ended — no way, no cyclic forth-and-turn 

Of sane patrol ; but one insanity 

Of unreturning, wherefore unadvanced. 

Stiff stationship : patrol's obliteration. — 

What were this order, God, creation ? Whence 

Its nothingness proved of the night and rack ? 

Here in the chill exhaustion someway life 

Shows novel — as the pulse-beats weaken, leaps 

A fresh interpretation ! All is lost : 

World ended. Build I in the death anew 

A world ; create, order and aye uphold 

A true patrolship ; am first realizing 

An absolute guardship which itself shall prove 

Sea, strand or land, cloud or the gale, one truth 

Of genuine inexhaustion ; self-support 

164 



THE PATROL 

Unending, infinite-cycled ; even by being 
Returnless, unbeginning ! — Lo ! I lie 
Drooping to death ; soaring to light alive ! 

This orphanage, this chaos and this stop 
Supposed, by no beginning and no God ! 
'T is proven. And this gale is all that was 
From first ; no first else ; nay, no first defined. 
This is the worldhood : chaos, nothingness 
In all times terminant, an unremittent. 
Inexorable, absolute blockade 
To any journeying ; the mere machine 
Proved mere machine, hence utterly run-down. 
E'en though the day to-come may constantly 
Succeed night ; sunshine and the fecund spread 
Of earth confronting ocean's moisture-breath 
For marriage-procreation be the bourne 
Of every storm-rack ; though creation come 
To severate the waters constantly ; 
Yet is the demarcation now wiped out. 
This moment no polarity of earth 
To ocean and no unioning of light 

165 



EARLIER POEMS 

Are mine. But instantly is God deposed — 

Creation, order, law defunctionate 

To orphanage. And I, incapable 

Of guardianship, am no man ; never was 

Nor could be creature of an order'd scheme, 

Patrol of this lost boundary ; but am not ; 

Even as this emptiness I deem'd an use 

Of ocean-sperm and land-fertility 

Swoons storm-obliterate. — The chaos swarms ; 

The rack sweeps on and over nothingness ! — 

Though is the vast suggestion mystic-borne 

In on the swooning spirit ; how, in last 

Extremity, most isolate unuse 

And worth lessness of creature that I was 

(Sunk then in sand-storms, shrivelling away 

To spume-shrunk indiscernibility 

World-like), how yet this deadweight which I am 

Sums up and comprehends as ne'er before 

This tragedy, this elemental loss 

Now first perceived, now known a tragedy ; 

Whence personally vital, valuable 

And genuine as can be no creation, 

i66 



THE PATROL 

No ordered iterance : self-processive ; ay, 

Appreciates, realizes in this doom 

Of earth, air, ocean and the nought of things 

Someway a worldhood, a sufficiency 

Of self-assumption — were it earth's, air*s, ocean's ? 

An ordering, creation, nay, an end ? 

Or, in default of each and all of these 

(These unit-portions of the spent machine 

Proved zero ; every unit yielding place 

To a total, infmitesimally whole, 

Self-individual uniqueness), rather 

A somewhat in whose desolation felt 

Of self (self-conscienced emptiness) is found 

No use, indeed, nor order, no patrol 

Of forth-and-turn and turn-again ; but value 

Of estimation, poise and focusship 

Ensphering, self-use — beauty — which can need 

No purpose and no sanction, yet nor God 

Beyond the autovital, through and through 

Uniquely self-establish'd ; each in pause 

Eternal but by being incessantly. 

Interminably fluxion 'd ? — Can the strength 

167 



EARLIER POEMS 

Of this corporeal tragedy rear up 

My bodily presence over and beyond 

This battling, baffling of the terrible gale 

To re-exertion in self-exercise 

Of adequate inexhaustion, making way 

Where no way was : ah ! guardian utterly 

Of overwhelming tempest ? Through this storm 

I stretch abroad, brooding as light before 

Creation. And am chaos, rack ; am world ! 

This, then, is godship ; this, the cause, supposed 

Abandoned ; this, the guardianship, patrol 

Of earth and ocean — on this swept sand-beach 

To swoon ! Thus in the estimated loss, 

The conscious sacrifice extinguishing 

The bodily progress and the finite zeal. 

Springs space-transcendence ! In the storm first find 

Ocean and earth the ocean-difference 

From earth by self-abandonment of all 

Distinctive feature ! And the paradox 

Makes of my burial, my perishing, 

A perseverance. Can this strange truth be ? — 

i68 



THE PATROL 

Someway these limbs bestir. A tingling steals 
Through flesh and marrow; that the beat of 

brain 
Pulses the blood at heart; that now 1 lift 
Body erect and stand upon these feet 
For forward progress : thus ; and thus. I move ; 
Resume patrolship. And yon eastward rift 
Augurs a storm-subsidence and the dawn ! 
Lo ! was the truth but paradox ; my dream 
A quietism : how that the world might run 
Back from accomplishment ; assuredly 
That pause could be of any purposive 
Use and advancement, maintenance or end ? 
Have I been drunk with derogation from 
Ripe humanhood, become as untaught babe 
In birth-approximation of this numb 
Death -swooning ? And am now by blood's revolt 
Revitalized, re-masking at this dawn's 
Storm-respite to soul-husks not quite slough'd-off 
Of orderly patrol, the turn-again 
Aye and return through number'd, finite shifts 
Of the demarcation of a land from sea, 

169 



EARLIER POEMS 

Maintenance of a severance, a beach 

Created ; to God's worn creatorship, 

Establishment as of mechanic world 

And man, each insufficient to maintain 

Self or the other, save if by recourse 

To authority and pre^stablish'd scheme 

Inexplicable, being ex machinal 

Can soul forswear soul's death -experience ; 

Born again (nay, now first well-born !) be still 

Unautogenerate, unsophisticate 

Creature of order and a selfless God 

Supposed : but in that agony supreme 

Outlived, drown'd down — not rehabilitable ? 

Sooth, 'twas a supreme sanity, insane 

(Here I take up obliterated lines 

With firmness fresh of foot and strength of limb) 

By stress of concentration : world and God 

Focuss'd so microcosmic as to seem 

Nought but my bodily swooning ; now recharged 

With wide vitality ; none less ensphered 

By mine expansive, unimprison'd soul — 

God and the world a godship and a world 

170 



THE PATROL 

Made over new (these footmarks on the sand 
Are a new path cut out, untrod before 
And unretractable — mine, yet these sands' 
Which hitherto were sands', not mine ; which in 
That swooning were made mine, not then these 

sands*!) 
And I a cosmic soul, a spirit of earth. 
Air, ocean and this ocean-beach : as these 
Are soul too ; each, some focus of me here 
In comprehension : world-in-me, the God ! — 

Lo ! dawn ; whose orderly returning streams 

No iteration of created light 

Spawn'd upon chaos ; but whose after-storm 

Is a re-birth of this my tempest and 

This self-same tempest of earth, sky and sea ; 

Divine and needing no establishment ; 

Unique ; unknown before ; criterion 

Of all-time ; by world's very orphanage 

A self -sustain ment, ordering afresh 

The demarcations ; morning's after-night ! 

Lo! how the tempest calms itself; sea, sky 

171 



EARLIER POEMS 

And land acquire, now first, distinctive wise 
Their intercourse, their organism. My spirit 
Guardeth a worldhood ; ceaseless, unbegun 
And unreturning proveth aye patrol ! 



172 



A DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

Reserving my best answer till the end : — 

Friend, I am glad of opportunity 

(Returning thanks for gratulation given) 

Now on attainment of my good degree 

To offer explanation womanwise 

Of woman's aim ; how, modern yet madonna, 

We nowise for the man's-acquirement 

Doff femininity ; but far the more 

Attain the real, ideal womanhood. 

For justification seems essential here 

(If not in your eyes, yet required of mine) 

Of me who undertake, more ways than one, 

To be the equal helpmate of a man. 

And, in so setting forth apology 

For manlier womanhood, I gladly greet 

Manhood that learns to read doubly aright, 

Can comprehend the womanly in man. — 

This, in appreciation of that work 

Of ethic grace, more woman's gift than man's, 

173 



EARLIER POEMS 

Which my philosophy so well approves, 

My womanhood shall aid you carry on.— 

Modern : madonna ? Can the sweet, old faith 

In innocence, in household holiness 

Abide sophistication of our times ? 

Woman, the wise, be woman any more ? 

Can girlhood — 'grace, the glad simplicity 

Of young, ingenuous heavenliness ' — survive 

Strict application of equality 

With standards of a strenuous competition, 

World's sweat-and-blood contention man with man? 

Ay ; and in thus surviving best transfuse 

The mundane manhood, make world's wealth and health 

Heavenly-feminine, an whole humane! — 

First, for the trivial accessories 
Of garb and guise of speech, I would not urge 
Man-modes or manners. By some hours of contact 
With maids too mannish in their cloth and cut 
Of talk, I reach conclusion that such scouts 
Sent in reconnaissance advanced of the guard 
Are simply spies to bring back tales of the camp 

174 



A DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

Its orientation, outlook, walls, redoubts 
Merely, not privy to the commander*s mind 
Of either side, not serviced of the staff 
Fit to interpret information filch 'd. 
These are the sexless who — scarce maid, scarce man- 
Lose lovability of femininehood 
Nor gain the compensation of man-insight 
Into proportions, dignities of things. 
Them I pass over ; though admit the garb 
Man-modish of presumptive usefulness 
When, yielding to demands of deftness, maids 
May yet not cast aside maid-modesty 
By too conspicuous precociousness — 
In time, when men's own minds learn to combine 
Propriety with the freedom, not as now 
Through long association needs suspect 
A laxness with the unconvention'd style. 
And also I 'd admit the maid, if frank. 
Were then more sure of speech to countervail 
Men's coarseness, want of courtesy ; to teach 
In practising a sober chivalry 
Of man's-to-woman, woman 's-speech-to-man 



175 



EARLIER POEMS 

Direct, distinct, yet sympathetic ; mellow'd 
Not by superfluous gallantry, but open 
Admission of a mutual reverence. — 
These things will with the culture of the times 
Ripen, the outward rind of seed within. 
'Tis the intention, quality attain'd 
Of spiritual richness, which makes well or ill 
The maidliness or manliness of mode ; 
Interpretation yet dependent on 
Environment, mind-habit man's or maid's. 

Which leads me to the kernel of my creed ; 

Necessity that aught of great or good, 

If to be instant good, not obsolete 

Nor overwhelm'd, must — howsoever deep, 

And all the more in virtue best of depth — 

Must lift at level, ne'er below the brim. 

Of the flood of life ; how world-environment 

Such as the times have labor'd and brought forth 

Affords criterion ; and but well or ill 

(Though well-and-ill give meaning to the mean. 

Value-directive to above-below ; 

176 



A DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

And in such sense were moral-absolute ! ) 

Is found above, below respectively 

The best mean of attainment of the times 

In the purpose and the practice pitched upon 

By way of instance : marriage, humanhood. 

That which were well in man, we 'd both agree, 

When battle-ax meant wooing — the bloodshed's 

Barbarity — were barbarous but now 

In the taste of now ; were best at that brute date. 

The maid who sulk'd at spindle in her tower 

Daylong, and nightlong wail'd her plight, were nought 

To the purpose of perfection in our time — 

Unless for a social gain by pity given, 

A satisfaction that she wax not worse 

In the nerves and need asylum for her pains ! 

And if in home-communion womanhood 

Be not, all ways, full equal of the man 

(Whatever may prove a measure of attainment) 

Is woman of necessity degraded 

In the ultimate humanhood, the family. 

Ay, and can family in wife degraded — 

Motherhood proved inadequate to man — 



177 



EARLIER POEMS 

Prosper in fatherhood left lone and mateless ; 
Man find humanity, be human-whole 
In union proved no partnership humane ? — 
Thus it behoves to match the best in man 
With woman-measure equal, measure meet 
For the masculine attainment through the world 
(Focuss'd and centred at the hearth of home ; 
Without which, sex needs here no argument ! ) 
In best and brightest. If that best be love 
(Without which, home-community were nought- 
As you nor I should anywise dispute ! ) 
Behoves a close inquiry whether love — 
Nought differing, as love, in either sex ; 
Being union, if of infinite-diverse 
For either, each-in-each identically^ 
Prosper by much sophistication, candor 
Of intellectual determinism : 
Whether a logick'd love be — Poetry! 
And, if the intellectually complex 
Be proved to prosper love in modern man. 
Must woman, to attain full womanhood. 
Acquire the characteristic modern mind. — 

178 



A DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

Friend, my philosophy has taught me much 
(But you too know how love's entail'd of learn- 
ing!) 
Beneath the times* appearance. At the first 
I nursed a skepticism juvenile 
Anent cool wooings with much circumstance 
Of pros and cons and welfare of the race. 
Till, by some sight of wisdomless, rude worship 
Caird love — love once, when world stood at less 

strength 
Of stress — yet little beyond appetite 
In carelessness for consequence to her 
Beloved — for inability to comfort. 
Protect ; in lust-romantic selfishness 
Scarce Love — it came upon me that the more 
Of knowledge more the spiritual intent, 
World-conscious content actual of the union 
In the spirit-self call'd Love. If world be one 
(One time-stream conscious of before-and-after, 
With content ever-cumulant both ways), 
Then is that oneness by diversity — 
Obtain'd, ne'er by disparity 'twixt minds 

179 



EARLIER POEMS 

Sex-married but rather, by a wealth in each 

At acme of its own development 

Contributive to the spirit-partnership — 

More and more, more and more an unioning 

In ripe reality concrete and true, 

Most whole by most complexity. And man 

Scientist, if but high philosopher 

At heart (philosophy, the world-made-self 

Of science), living lover cosmical ! 

Man loves not less by learning more and more ; 

But more distinctly, more directly loves ; 

Unioning in his love a world more rich, 

More heaven-holy as more habitable 

With every admonition of the brain. — 

The old simplicity was worldhood once 

When yet concrete, complex'd as world then knew ; 

Not now. The innocent inadequacy 

Precludes proportionate love-with-wisdom, leaves 

Not godliness, not whole humanity. 

Nought is in knowledge of the wide god-world 

To cancel wonder, worship : more and more 

Beauty made manifest the more love-known ; 

1 80 



A DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

Man, woman, known in mutual reverence. — 

Whence, would I share the burden of the world. 

The * glory and splendor and beauty', firm in love. 

Be fit for fostering of men to-come 

And women of the future family, 

Must we in family be, both alike, 

(And wisdom means a culture of the highest, 

A love-enraptured world-philosophy !) 

Wisely in love — and else no love in fact : 

I, only so, eternal womanhood. 

Friend, by this intricate tediousness I take 
A serious luxury in writing long. 
Painstakingly in pure, supreme delight ; 
Nor need excuse me to the poet-lover — 
Feeling (scarce song in a love less adequate !) 
Alone true poetry in logick'd love. — 
Not that you want the argument ! Your prayer 
Assumed the worth of the woman nobly sued. 
After these years' forbearance whilst I toil'd. 
With gratulation of her task's success ! 
But — for the justification of myself, 

i8i 



EARLIER POEMS 

My woman's way unto my mind of a man ; 
My woman's way which yieldingly says : * Yes '. 
How should a woman in these latter days — 
Madonna but by a maid-modernity — 
Want for the word to make of woman's world 
Man's heaven, ope humanity to both ? 
Thus, for this multitude of reasons (woman 
Is woman more for reasoning rigidly. 
Woman indeed worth man but by man-logic), 
1 repeat, * Yes '. With reverence I deem 
Myself shown worthy of an equal bond 
With man, a mutual-freedom. I declare 
Purpose to put to the proof my good degree 
As wife and woman-fosterer of childhood 
Worthy to serve, worthy to share and show 
World-self-control. For that I know your love 
(Knowledge comports with love, by all these 

proofs !), 
I love you and will live with you, we twain 
In world-sophistication made one soul. 
Thus I accept the gratulation given 
At the gratulation's test; admit attainment 

182 



A DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

Formal of fitness for the modern life 
Of loving logic, lovable counselhood, 

Here in this letter little is of new, 
But all sincere. In all sincerity — 



183 



A HORTICULTURIST 

* Good growing-weather' ? — Sir, I seldom find 

Souls of a leisure that delights to lay 

Ear to the growth of the ground and listen life's 

Slow, verdurous vegetating. Yet my life 

Is lapp'd in leisure of a listening soul 

(Leisure by verdurehood made busiest so) ; 

One kind affinity for flowery facts 

Their loves and likes and splendid prospering 

In the sun here and the watering of the rain. 

And, for the gradus of the yearly growth 

Is generous and one annual orbit scarce 

Distinct at large from annual orbits gone 

Year by year, season after season, finds 

My sympathy much space to enter in. 

Enjoy and ponder-through the lives of these 

In various, vegetative meanings ; mind 

Of mine a source as of philosophy 

Interpreting cell-science of our times 

To a function'd monadism. And, for the years 

Are years, is long-establish *d sympathy 

184 



A HORTICULTURIST 

Sweet ; and mine insight rooted, great and green. 

That thus I seldom crave the human sort 

Of sympathy ; and, while accepting yours 

For a genuine godsend of discipleship 

Such as you care to offer, I should maintain 

Communion nathless satisfying, sir, 

Here in the garden though you chose to go. — 

Yet go not ! For the human comradeship 

Exceeds the vegetative. And 't is solace 

This once to parley in equality. 

Of my speech, most must be to show you here 

Humanity in plantship ; poetry 

Of planthood that is in me. Though but the more 

Is speech distinctive over and beyond 

The plantship of our manhood. And in your air 

I scent at any rate a verdurehood 

Of young and vigorous insight ; and would speak 

Where comprehension can accompany ; 

Not, as too often, a derision, coarse 

Or keen miscomprehension of my mood. — 

Ay, there have been a many travelers here, 

From fame of my fine flowers ; hardly one 

185 



EARLIER POEMS 

Whose motive to admire them was mine. 
There have been many minds to question mine 
Concerning management, assistance given 
To planthood-needs and hopes ; and many eyes 
To feast on scarlet, azure, golden-pink. 
Purple and passion of the great leaves' green ; 
Yet hardly an heart intelligent to love. — 
As for the crude, ill-educated sort 
Who gape at the flame of the foot-wide petalling 
Call'd poppy, stare the larkspur's azure blind ; 
Fall-to with brush and pallet, paint my garden 
For an arabesque mosaic ; go away 
Cocksure that color is the crux of things — 
Nor do 1 care, that they 'd admit space-form 
If form be just their color's diagram ! — 
I take small comfort from such artist-crumbs 
Of human character. I quarrel not 
With the canvas 'd color-clots they carry off 
To frame and feast on ; sooth, their color-plan 
Is good as mine in the garden — or, if better, 
Is better to their credit! 'T is but their claim 
Of ultimate intelligence, perception 

i86 



A HORTICULTURIST 

Of pure sensational impression, * cause 

Of all that 's real in thought ', that boils my blood ! 

If they could see how close to savagery 

Their psychologic fallacy betrays them ! 

Could they but feel how the creed's consistency 

Would carry them beneath intelligence 

At all, down, down below the weeds of grass. 

Clean beneath loam and rocks and dust ; how * sense * 

If sense alone, mere * color-scheme ', were quite 

Incapable of any schematism : 

* Felt color \ color but by a value yielded 
In each concatenating soul of us 

(In their souls only less than in mine own!); 

* Sense ' therefore real but in sense' self-transcension 
(If elementally as a manifold 

Of photic combination, then the more 
By meaning the flower-in-us, the leaf-in-us : 
And this, regardless of a three or two 
Dimensions in such language-of-the-eye !) — 
If they could grasp this fair philosophizing — 
Sure, they would pause in the painting, grow more 
worthy 

187 



EARLIER POEMS 

The wonder-beauty of the world they flout — 

The world they not intentionally, indeed, 

Though none the less inexorably, flout ; 

Deducing * consciousness ' from * spots ' and * points * 

Spotless as pointless save interpreted 

Language-like to a purport, at the last. 

Of photic-couch'd enthusiasms of soul : 

The soul inane unless by sympathy 

Of insight universal, thus express'd ! 

Pity, that most of those who visit here 

Dabbling in color, may not rest content 

With insight yielded to the spots they paint ; 

But still must half-explain it all away, 

The planthood with our manhood's sympathy 

For the planthood in us. Oh, they still assert 

Their objectivity (quite impossible 

Sans object-insight!), still forswear their creed 

By what their brush creates ; yet scarce explain 

How a comprehension comes — themselves but spots, 

Blotches of hue — can color comprehend? — 

So much for those half-cultured who 'd deny 

The intellect that makes intelligent 

i88 



A HORTICULTURIST 

Even its degradation, their degree 

Of stultification — let them paint and pry ! 

They paint fair pictures ; guess nor why nor how. — 

Then there come others of the science-brood : 

Psychologists not these, but physiologues 

Who miss the meaning much as painters do ; 

If yet, as by inversion, taking heed 

Too much to the plant, too little to themselves, 

Fail in the reconstruction equally. 

Lacking analogies intuitive 

Despite a parade and pomp and circumstance 

Of an observation absolute supposed ! 

Yea, they are wearisome who lay such claim 

To the final verdict, last exactitude 

By chemical analysis of cells ! 

Ay, analyse back to a primal element — 

One, mark you, not such four-score of their scheme— 

The hypothetical sub-hydrogen 

In quantitative self-complexities. 

Or any ion, unit what 's-its-name. 

For quintessential basis of their cells — 

Explain you anything ; or, haply, state 

189 



EARLIER POEMS 

Now first with nicety, exactitude 

The problem life-philosophy 's to solve ? — 

What of their tissuey nuclei ? I grant 

Great value in the evolutionary, 

The functional comparisons of plant 

And human organism though each expressed 

In algebraic signs, atomic symbols 

The simplest (so the most inadequate) 

Of common terms— for a proper place and purpose 

In tracing continuities throughout 

And bases for the felt analogies 

Of insight-sympathy so sub-defined ; 

Not for their purpose of reducing plant 

And man alike to a cell-nonentity I 

Prate of root-pressure, ferment, chlorophyll, 

Capillary-absorption, permeation 

Wholly accounted-for by mechanism, 

Contiguance osmotic cell with cell ! 

Sir, what would all their cell-stuffs in the world 

Be cells of, cells in fact, save cells-of-plants ; 

The plant explaining still the cell, as cell 

Some least explains the molecule, as man 

190 



A HORTICULTURIST 

Explains by modified analogy 

(A modification based in knowledge of 

The springs of action, function motivate) 

In insight-sympathy the living plant. 

For otherwise were every cell the same 

Whatever the chemic complex (chemistry 

Itself indifferent, failing reference 

To the over-planthood, over-humanhood 

Criterial of the contrasts) , plant with rock 

Clean interchangeable, and man at best 

Mechanical recorder, comprehending 

Nor rock nor plant, nor the nature of himself — 

Which, even by being the man-of-molecules. 

Conceives and so demarks both plant and man 

In terms both cellular-molecular 

And vegetative-human none the less. 

Cell-structure *s nowise structural enough 

(Though ne*er so chemic in the last resort!) 

To render comprehensibly as tissue 

The least elaborated thallogen ! — 

The chemic fallacy refutes itself 

In terms of protoplasm — preassumed 



191 



EARLIER POEMS 

An elementary material 

Equipped with each and all plant's faculties 

Supposed explain'd by reference thereto! — 

Thus for the physiologues ; they M miss the mark 

Of planthood by discovering too much ; 

Rending and tearing till the plant lie dead : 

Then edifying life with life's remains! 

And, for the better botanists who class 

And reclass by the manner of each frame's 

Resemblance, theirs is mainly but to aid 

(Save also, that they too teach relationships 

Of stock to stock in outworn ancestries) 

Memory's nomenclature, add to each 

Familiar face an unforgotten name — 

A worthy way ; but still beside the mark 

Of best appreciation ; and yet an aid 

To us who add a poetry to speech, 

Vivify epithets, both name and know! 

Remains the poet-knower, I or you 
(With chemic erudition well-equipp'd 
Toward managing, directing planthood-hopes 



192 



A HORTICULTURIST 

Whose health-achievement, novelty-success 

Sheer color advertises to the eye!), 

Friend and befriended of the patient plants ; 

A comprehension and intelligence 

Beyond the plants', yet yielding planthood voice 

Of humanhood. — Not as from human tongue, 

The plant call'd human and endow'd with speech ; 

No such crude, antiquated Grecianism, 

Conventional inheritance of verse ; 

But selfhood of the planthood felt in me, 

Made vocal in the man, appreciator! — 

Friend, I have spoken of myself to you. 

Of the planthood in me ; making poetry 

Of the mutualism. Friend, I pray you, throw 

To ash-heap for the food (not flower and fruit) 

Of life in you these sensuous-simple points 

Of the colorist, these cells — save for their union 

In the living whole ! Sing heart-philosophy 

Of each through each, so sing my larkspurs loud 

In the azureness and sap-fertility 

Of rhythm, sonorous syllabling of self ! 

Science and sentience, bad psychology 

193 



EARLIER POEMS 

Are the poverty of intellect of those 

Who pose for preachers of the modernism 

(Of a color-gloating, of a clinic-garden 

In gardenless disintegrance) and fain 

Make idols of fact. — Friend, why not truth : like mine ? 



194 



THE PRIMA DONNA 

Ah, but I laugh that weary, happy laugh 
Our Browning wrote of ; like his Herakles 
After the labor and accomplishment — 
Husband mine, after this my conquering 
You quote me now, their outburst of applause ! 
* The great tones sung, in technic perfected ; 
Authoritative ; satisfaction full ' ! 
Thus, I have gain'd mine art's acknowledgment ; 
Can beg a respite, steal an hour for learning 
To understand this art they rave about ; 
Comprehend labor and victory — conquest new ? • 
Friend, for what end the labor all these years ? 
Is it that in me something wakes beyond, 
Far beyond, in and through the conquest here ; 
Some dim suspicion of a failure lurk'd 
In all this worship loud and eminence ? 
Failure, save understanding yield me aid. 
End comprehended prove end earn'd and won ? 
Ay, for 't is mainly they applaud the voice ; 
The song but little, technic rated far 

195 



EARLIER POEMS 

Above mere music meant in every note : 

The strength superb and sinew'd mastery 

Of the thews, their admiration ; not the aim — 

Lion or hydra, death's self, overcome, 

Appropriated, reconciled with life ? 

Husband ! What if, before the morning wanes 

To noon ; ere I rouse to the daily stint 

Of sheer vocality (you, to music's work 

Genius'd, creative) — ah ! what if we two 

Couch'd happily over against this breakfast-hearth 

Philosophize — nay, what if I hold-forth 

From throne of pettiness preeminent, 

Instruct the man of genius how my art — 

Half-scorn'd, sir (nay, in heart !) by either of us ! - 

How this my failure in my victory 

Proves victory over failure by intent, 

Means music ; ay, despite such shameless wrong 

Done music in my master'd craftsmanship, 

My plaudits that declass the genuine crown 

Won, worn in spirit, husband, by your soul 

(You listening patiently) — nor fear lest I 

Catch hoarsening by the talk ! I could not sing 

196 



THE PRIMA DONNA 

To-night, so stirr'd my heart is by this false 

Tribute to technic of the dabblers there ; 

Ne'er could I sing save some relief of talk 

Intervene, free my soul from scorn of self 

For failing (in interpreter's-attempt) 

To obliterate the interpreter, efface 

Technic in triumph of interpreting's 

Transparency ; for triumphing as now 

Diva and hrava, what you will ! — Ah, husband ! 

Fancy his Herakles exhibiting 

Muscles and sinews to the sleeking palm 

Of pleased Admetos, purged Augean folk ! 

'T were Herakles' to question : * Next, what task ? ' 

Yes, and what task, what end ? You know the end 
Best in your brain ; somewhat, perchance, in the song 
Conceived, composed of the manuscript. But see 

you 
(Your work has craft, but of a nobler kind !) 
Song's meaning best in the masteries I mouth 
By any virtue of their mastery ? 
Nay ; in your heart, though half -articulate, 

197 



EARLIER POEMS 

1 dare discern a want : * This voice whose speech 

Woman's, divine (being my wife's) must mean 

(As I mean her soul by each song conceived) 

My soul, must still intend to interpret me — 

The husband, understood, made one by love. 

Yet' — there the half -articulation fades ! 

Friend, is it wife's-love merely that should seize 

And speak the soul ; subordinate the method 

By worship in the music, every note ? 

Or is it somewhat in you (ah ! in me !) 

Deeper and holier that demands of me ? — 

Well, then, for the mode your husband-love assumes 

(Your genius' self-disguise) which would support 

These people in their tribute of applause : 

'True to the timbre ' ! — But — timbre's criterion, 

Is it some sensuous analysis 

Of how tone in the abstract, tone as tone. 

Mere tone must be, to be tone-beautiful ? 

Is it, conviction springs in the concave vault 

Of palate, passages to a nicety 

Adjusted that the vibrant resonance 

Assume just such a sort of resonance 

198 



THE PRIMA DONNA 

As, entering in, tickles appropriately 

To the ears' formation, fibre-sac and cell ? 

So ; but are nerve and sac and fibre judge 

Of sound's heart-fitness ; is the vibrant vault 

Warrant of an art-value ? Dubiously ; 

Being themselves, in their organic gust. 

Not only life-subordinate but, even 

A register of bygone ways ancestral 

In taste one-time esthetic but not now 

Exemplary of our soul-onwardness — 

An onwardness which formed or sac or cell ; 

And ever modifies despite the drag 

And deadweight of their frame conservative. 

Whose function chiefly were to keep us sane 

And tame unto our sociality ! 

Whence, if the tone be bound to please the ear 

Merely, must all life-satisfying lift 

Of soul-conatus be denied to it. 

And only that be art which ancestors 

In some now-negligible infant-age 

Of the earth conceived and earnestly put forth, 

Maybe, but which to our maturity 

199 



EARLIER POEMS 

Must prove but babbling. And the physic-tone 

(Mere air- vibration, mark !) however order'd 

(Be it ancestrally by structure-chance 

Or by deliberate choice of men to-day) 

To abstract, mathematic unities 

Of ratios overtonic, what you will 

Of arithmetical simplicities, 

Can claim authority only if the soul 

(A pretext which appeals to you nor me) 

Should dwell in an indolence for sweetness' sake 

And fain eschew a strenuous nobleness ! 

*T is well, to know whereby the bland be bland 

Of structure; though to choose, for strength of 

choice ! — 
Remains what ? Just this genius of you there 
Filter'd and frittered someway through my voice 
To ears and brains and souls agape of them : 
No emptiest, aural yearning, no, nor sample 
Authentic of the laboratory-tone, 
But tone-expression — self alive for song ! 
Fancy his Herakles cutting out some thew, 
Slashing and slicing sinews, muscles so 



200 



THE PRIMA DONNA 

That each might be admired more overtwise, 

Each obtain due share of the mob's remark, 

Ere it undertake a fresh strain presently ! 

Where, then, were muscle, sinew for the work ? 

Nay, he knew well each muscle's ministry 

In the man ; as I, each tone's unto the song ! 

'Tis the appropriateness of sound to meaning 

(Muscle with sinew interwove to bear 

Pressure precise to the point the man's whole self 

Wills) based best in departure from the gust 

Of merely ear as ear, if masterfully 

Whole — 'tis the mastery's self-subordinance — 

That yields voice to your music ; nowise mine ! 

Ah ! but my 'soul's original research. 

Basis and background of interpreting ' ? — 

Insofar as bent, grasp and insight all. 

To comprehension of your wonder-mood. 

Perfect interpreter I well may seem ! 

But, grant, the rank sinew, overweening, thwart 

The will of the hero ; insofar as thus 

Self -thwarted, then no hero and no task ! — 

Technic, essential — to effacing it ! 

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EARLIER POEMS 

But my tirade yet bears an inference 

E'en beyond aught of Browning's Herakles ! 

(E'en beyond, friend, your inmost fear for me !) 

1 'm but a stop-gap; Herakles, heroic 

Not solely for a mastery-muscular 

Of world, of death ; ah, more for the presaging, 

A prophecy in him, of heroes new, 

Of mastery more complex, conquering 

To some task's end more worldly-intimate ; 

Some self-expression in and through more means 

Than muscles merely ; some philosopher, 

Elucidator, artist like to yoa! 

Where were the value to our modern world 

(Nay, even to a post-heroic classic-age 

Poetic as we are also musical !) 

Of a latter Herakles ; save Herakles 

Embrace modernity ? No muscle now 

Finds ultimate tasks, regenerative aims 

Work'd through thews, sinews merely ! — For this once 

Let me show prophecy, show forth my spirit 

In depths beyond mere prima-donnaship 

(Even though deeply soul's interpreter): 

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THE PRIMA DONNA 

More worthy to be mated through your own ! 

Where find you music most ? In the vibrant voice 

Ne'er so entrancing (nay, ne'er so intent 

With sense-subordinance !); in voice of mine 

At height of soul-interpreting ? Or then 

When in the silent, sense-immediate 

Brain the vast beauty bursts of issuant song 

Unvoiced, yet self-articulant indeed ; 

Made manuscript, maybe ; yielded to me 

To lift and thrill and all-transfuse me through 

With wonder and worship of imagined sound. 

Perfectly plastic, truth-determined then ? 

Miscomprehend me not ! Stand I and sing. 

Add I to the music-marvel hints of charm, 

I allow — not music's, not the mind's that sang 

In vision, but visibly — women's ; at the best 

Extraneous, adventitious ; at the worst 

(Look to worse women !) art-detestable ! 

Ah ! were the sweat and reeking of the god 

Good, best, themselves, or only by default 

Of some great engine to envelop death, 

Crush and o'erpower — man-directed still, 



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EARLIER POEMS 

Conceived, invented, executed; man's 

Multiple-marvel of effectiveness 

For just the purpose, end and aim of the task ? 

An 'instrumentation ', you 'd aver ? Not quite ; 

Save as a second stop-gap ; halfway stage 

Through mere mechanic enginery toward strength 

Of the logical positing, a forensic lore 

Surpassing in the self-projection ; speech 

Of poesy (ay, and of music) genius-made : 

Fit to transcend even death, made death-through-life ! 

Instrumentation ? Insofar a step 

From the extraneous, personal appeal 

Of mere interpreter soul-ill-at-ease, 

(Never, not once purely interpreting 

The maker's meaning) — riddance, in some least 

Degree, of mediator yet in kind 

Originator and confuser so ! — 

His Herakles were poet possibly ! — 

Stands poesy now, intoned in pulpit, droned 

At tableside, spouted above the pit 

Poesy, as in the ante-music age 

Of troubadour, of rhapsode chanting it — 

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THE PRIMA DONNA 

Poesy ? Or poesy most, silently sent 

From brain through brain by symbol'd syllabling ? 

' The silent symbol still a mediator * ? 

No ; no ! The syllabling in the poet's soul 

Speaks not save soul-included, comprehended 

(In such sort as your reader may attain) — 

Except for sight's absorption of the types — 

Sans mediation's externality : 

The meaning-in-the-sound — the poet-pure — 

Taken up, reproduced, identified 

In my mind-substantive, meaning-in-sound 

Of mine ; suggested, straight interpreted 

Even by the interpreter's obliterance — 

The symbols nowise spoken, no, nor heard ! 

' Understood but by previous mediance 

Call'd education '? —Mediate previously, 

Not now as contemporary with the song ; 

But inborn, made immediate instantly ! 

1 leave the elucidation to some seer 

More versed in dialectic lore than me, 

More capable of tracing point by point 

Thought's infinite labyrinths — I dogmatize ; 

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EARLIER POEMS 

State you the truth with just enough of truth ^s 

Elaboration self-explanatory 

To satisfy my soul if scarce convince you ; 

I appeal in faith just to the faith in you, 

Leave law to lawyers' pleading. 'T is your song 

Unsung, made manuscript, so silently 

Symbolized to self-syllabling that springs 

Direct, transcendent, satisfying, whole 

In the soul of me, made one with yours by love ; 

Love, through love's most elaborate symphonies 

Identifiable in song ! 

I *sing 
To-night again ' ? Nay, * cancel the contract, seek 
Respite for nerves so set at odds with fact ' ? 
Ha ? Have I frighten 'd you ; the pulse, the eye 
Flush'd, fever'd in me ? I admit some glow 
Of indignation godlike against ways 
So pitiful, so unlike music's ! * Mistress 
Of song, indeed ' ! — Ah ! but the end in view 
(Realized through the soul's revolt from such applause! ), 
Mine aim that dignifies the technic, lends 
More than interpreter's-efficiency 

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THE PRIMA DONNA 

To mediation ; and presages thus 

The mightier music of the printed page, 

The limitless fresh opportunity 

For multiple-symphony — once the subtleties 

Step by step but familiarized through ear, 

Made comprehensible ! — that now I sing 

My simpler-sensuous melodies ; make mine art 

Didactic for a purpose ; teach and try 

To make intelligible the music-mode 

Bit by bit to the loves and lives of them, 

These people with their music-moved applause. 

Who know not what they do ! — Husband of mine, 

Herakles prophesied Euripides ; 

Presaged our very Browning's genius-piece ! 



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